" ... What if?" Through the alchemy of those two words, something new comes into the world.

When I teach writing, I have a mantra: Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.

His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.

One generation's idea of fast pace might be different from a later generation's.

A thriller becomes great when it carries a feeling of reality and truth.

There are no inferior types of fiction, only inferior practitioners of them.

As long as thriller authors teach us about our world, they'll be relevant.

Your obligation as writers is to distinguish yourself. … The ultimate result should be a book that you write that no one else could have written.

At their best, thrillers not only entertain. Ideally they also reflect the society in which they are set, analyzing our fears and how we perceive the world.

A thriller must be thrilling. A mystery may or may not be a thriller depending on how much breathless emotion it has, as opposed to cerebral calculation.

People who know various movie versions don't really know the story.

We always desire peace yet we prepare to go to war.

Leaving the path to follow the heart, to help someone, is anything... but reckless.

Remember, it's still a mystery to be an adult. If you knew it all before eighteen, you'd have nothing to look forward to.

Character in leadership is the most important balance for leadership. Without character, leaders have no safety. Leadership has no protection without character.

Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth. None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.

I would like to stress here that a lasting peace in the Chechen republic and so-called peace talks with the bandits are not the same thing, and I would ask everyone to make no mistake about that.

People say photographs don't lie, mine do.

It is not true that love makes all things easy; it makes us choose what is difficult.

Self-pity is, perhaps, the least becoming of all emotions, and we often indulge in it only beause we are too exhausted to resist.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.