History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.

I was very conscious of race as I was writing. I was lucky to have spent real time in Portuguese Africa, but I am white and my main characters are white, outsiders at sea in the "Dark Continent."

For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the United States, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here.

I hope I will get to novelize my present circumstances at some point. I have some great stories to tell.

Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.

I am not trying to be young again. But I do feel the need to capture that energy in story form before it slips from my mind, to recount those adventures if not relive them.

One of the great sadnesses of my life, as I take stock at middle age, is the sense that the adventure largely ended by the time I was twenty-five.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better.

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.

There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.

I was very disciplined when home - lights out for the girls at 9:00, two hours of writing for me. It was murder on my marriage.

Children teach us more than our elders because they are real reflector of our society.

Trust creates the sharing of ideas, plans, and feelings that becomes a gift that you can treasure.

You ball up your fist each time you hear about an unfound injustice in the world. That makes me your brother.

...these vignettes I sketch for you - what are they? watercolors ..yes and dreams blurred with tears ...

My dad told me, 'It takes fifteen years to be an overnight success', and it took me seventeen and a half years.

Irene's got a middle name, and it's Global Warming.

Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the "peace" candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.

Morality must guide calculation, and calculation must guide politics.

I've learned not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Why you would want to look any horse the mouth considering how infrequently they brush is beyond me.

When we are selective about doing business only with those who believe in our WHY, trust emerges.