I look for material that both interest me and challenges me. If I am drawn to the material and I have to work hard at it, the characters and the plots reflect the hours and hours of research.

In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all.

Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?

I'm scattered, and then that last hundred pages, bam, I'm a laser.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

It's not the beginning or the destination that counts. It's the ride in between.

Libraries rock! Not a sermon, just a fact. As a kid I was a library rat and books changed my life. They can change yours.

Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.

Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

Two people can care for each other but not want the same things.

When a poor man gives something, that is a sacrifice indeed. When a rich man gives something, it hardly rises to the same level.

Overall, becoming a carbon-neutral country would involve changes in our behaviour, but these are modest compared with the changes that will be forced upon us if we do nothing.

Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.

I was talented but crazy, semi-autistic and eccentric.

I was like Gene Kelly, it was called singing in the rain. No seriously, I wasn't really born with a singing voice, but my friends Joe and John taught me how to sing.

There is a strange depression that hangs over every little town that is no longer in the mainstream of life.

How can you think about the world without factoring in the unforseen, the fluke event?

As he heard me approach, he quickly leaped up, grabbing a nearby loaf of bread and holding it in front of him as if struck by a sudden desire to make a sandwich.

I don't have beef with nobody.

The strenuous life tastes better

There is only one duty, only one safe course, and that is to try to be right.