One of the great sadnesses of my life, as I take stock at middle age, is the sense that the adventure largely ended by the time I was twenty-five.

I was very conscious of race as I was writing. I was lucky to have spent real time in Portuguese Africa, but I am white and my main characters are white, outsiders at sea in the "Dark Continent."

For all the worship that Ronald Reagan elicits in conservative circles in the United States, I would venture that Thatcher did far more to reshape British society than Reagan did here.

I hope I will get to novelize my present circumstances at some point. I have some great stories to tell.

Novelists may be able to seek advice from readers and editors, but in the end, it is up to them to get the book right.

I am not trying to be young again. But I do feel the need to capture that energy in story form before it slips from my mind, to recount those adventures if not relive them.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but usually fiction is just better.

It is simply much easier to infuse life, feeling, and higher truth into a novel than a non-fiction work, to find the license to write truth without being wedded to fact.

There is, in my mind, no higher compliment to pay a non-fiction book than to say it reads like a novel.

I was very disciplined when home - lights out for the girls at 9:00, two hours of writing for me. It was murder on my marriage.

History - the non-fiction version - must inform the fiction to make it truthful; too much of it and your genres are colliding.

He's British, " she replied in a whisper. "He thinks he's perfect.

Sin has tarnished every area of life, and [Christ] wants to erase its stain everywhere.

I'm living with every step. I can't live with regret. The past is the past. I'm not worried about it. I can't change it. I can't fix it. It is what it is. I'm just living.

Once you think you know the song, then you have go and see how other people have done it.

Let somebody prove friendship which time and space cannot jolt, and then accept the love. Don't accept the love first and then find the friendship; it will never come. You have lost the game.

I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch.

Remember that one who forgets the language of gratitude can never be on speaking terms with happiness.

It is said that life is too short, and that’s quite true, unless you are lonely. Loneliness can bring time to its knees; an absolute and utter standstill.

Ain't singing for Pepsi, ain't singing for Coke, I don't sing for nobody, makes me look like a joke.

My coach, Liang Chow, had one rule while I was training for the 2008 Olympics: no skiing. I could do anything I wanted outside the gym, he said, except ski.