I aim to be translucent, so you don't notice the words, just their meaning. I haven't much insight into people's motivations.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

The CIA's research program is described in a book called "The Search for the Manchurian Candidate."

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

Protecting our environment is not a luxury we can choose to enjoy, but a simple matter of survival.

We are all prisoners of circumstance at one point or another.

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

The world isn’t big enough for all of us.

Marriages would in general be as happy and often more so if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor.

Being wrong on facts, that's something you have a real responsibility to correct. But being wrong in the fun sports way is part of the interplay.

Success tended to make the unorthodox acceptable

Few things are more damaging to our democracy than a military officer who doesn't have the moral courage to stand up for what's right or the moral fiber to step aside when circumstances dictate.

Each superfluous line, each wrongly placed line, any color placed without veneration or care, can spoil everything, that is, the spiritual.

Love is something eternal.