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

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.

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.

I like knowing where I am in action sequences if I'm supposed to.

Everyone's colored, or you wouldn't be able to see them.

Too oft is transient pleasure the source of long woes.

Well, I've been blessed with good hair, or at least some people think it is. It is the way it is, sort of does what it wants to. So, yeah, I guess it is [a metaphor for your views on art and life].

I suspect that writer's block afflicts mainly people who have some stable and ample source of income outside of writing. So far it hasn't been a problem.

Ill natures, the more you aske them, the more they stick.

The power of the corporate bureaucracy - the power of technostructure (a term that did not take off) - is something to which I still adhere.

First and foremost, I married for love. I can't believe I even have to defend this.

Having your back scratched is not the only reason to be married, but it is a good one, especially for those spots that are so hard to reach by yourself.

The art of government is not to let me grow stale.

Into the street the piper stepped, Smiling first a little smile As if he knew what magic slept In his quiet pipe the while. And the piper advanced And the children followed.