That's what civilization sometimes did to threats, real or perceived. They walled them off. Us against them. Survival of the fittest. You die so I can live.

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.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

Successful commitment occurs when your stated intentions are stronger than your hidden intentions, or when you consciously reconcile the conflict.

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it.

We have the choice to choose how we're going to educate our emotions.

No-one ever votes Tory, do they?

Gender relations are a sad story of men talking trash about women all over the world.

Never underestimate the power of bad ideas. They must be refuted again and again.

I enjoy watching sitcoms where the team behind it have successfully created a whole alternate reality that you can enter into for half an hour every week.

The parents' job is to be there for their kids, not the other way round. Troubles between parents need to be talked through with friends and not visited on the children.

If you imagine that once you have accomplished your ambitions you will have time to turn to the Way, you will discover that your ambitions never come to an end.