I prefer writing originals.

A reversal is just anything that's a surprise. It's a way of keeping the audience interested.

Everyone I know who used to be in the intelligence community is moving into the corporate world.

Ambiguity depletes as your budget rises.

I love the idea of spies in love. How would it work between two people who were so programmed to lie and be suspicious, who have a whole life based on pretence?

You have to know human behaviour … And the quality of your writing is absolutely capped at your understanding of human behaviour. You’ll never write above what you know about people.

The people in the Philippines are so extraordinarily nice.

No one can help you write. No one can teach you how to write.

Different people work different ways.

Fear changes everything. We're animals, and when we get afraid we act like animals. I'm not exempt from that.

I never really like it when other writers talk about coming in behind people and rewriting.

To hate others is ugly.To hate yourself is uglier.

we need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken

It is only the dead who do not return.

Good programmers stay open minded to that even though there is no obvious way to improve what they've done they... they keep looking and they listen to what other people have to say.

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

I receive letters from workers, from secretaries. . . . They are the most interesting ones.

The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of a woman?

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter.

Talking up a storm about food is so easy for me, it's second nature.

Babies need social interactions with loving adults who talk with them, listen to their babblings, name objects for them, and give them opportunities to explore their worlds.