I'm still an English professor at Rice University here in Houston. They've been very generous in letting me on a very long leash to just work on 'The Passage' and its sequels.

If you are writing any book about the end of the world, what you are really writing about is what's worth saving about it.

Behind every writer stands a very large bookshelf.

My inventing time is all done under the influence of aerobic exercise. Basically, I do all my thinking while I run.

I grew up during the Cold War, when everything seemed very tenuous. For many years, right up until the fall of the Berlin Wall, I had vivid nightmares of nuclear apocalypse.

We live, we die. Somewhere along the way, if we're lucky, we may find someone to help lighten the load.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

I have any number of completely dark obsessions and fascinations, and none of this was present in my profile or my growing profile as a writer.

What strange places our lives can carry us to, what dark passages.

My theory of characterization is basically this: Put some dirt on a hero, and put some sunshine on the villain, one brush stroke of beauty on the villain.

My rule has always been, write the next part of the book that you seem to know well. So I won't necessarily write chapter two after chapter one.

De temps à autre, il est bon de faire une pause dans notre quête du bonheur et d'être simplement heureux.

I will find my wayI can go the distanceI'll be there somedayIf I can be strongI know every mile will be worth my whileI would go most anywhere to feel like I belong

Every time I see something terrible, it's like I see it at age 19. I keep a freshness that way.

I'm not clumsy; just accident prone.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

Women who bear children before they establish serious habits of work, may never establish them at all.

Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.

If I get home, I'll be so stinking rich, I'll be able to pay someone to do my hearing.

I think all songs should have weather in them. Names of towns and streets, and they should have a couple of sailors. I think those are just song prerequisites.