Author Quotes

The CIA's research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

When I give a lot of speeches, they're always on the fly. I mean, I know what I'm going to say roughly, but I do not - will not read.

There's a lot more to publishing a book than writing it and slapping a cover on it.

One of the most talented writers out there is Brian Haig.

No matter how bad you think you have it, there's always - always somebody who's got it way, way worse.

My doctors warned me repeatedly that if you don't stay positive, you don't do well.

It's what every writer needs: a daybed.

I'm a bit of a Libertarian.

I'm a big believer in free enterprise. If people want to try it, then go for it.

I think the more avenues that open up when people want to publish, the better. Some of the authors that want to jump ship from the traditional houses and go on their own, you know what? Good luck. It's going to be a lot tougher than you think.

I just look at what's going on in the world.

I have such bad memories, sitting in the back of a classroom, being told, you know, everybody is going to read a paragraph, and skipping ahead to my paragraph and being mortified and trying to read it enough times so that I wouldn't stutter and stammer, getting called on, even in high school.

I have been blessed to have the same editor and work for a great publishing house.

Anybody who knew me growing up calls me Vinny.

And when I go around and talk to schools, what I tell the kids are, first of all, you have to accept each other's differences. Some of you are going to be a crappy football player, some of you are going to be a great mathematician. Whatever it is, accept each other's differences and help prop each o

A major theme in all my books is that the CIA is not only the first line of defense but they should also be the first line of offense.

A good football team plays offense and defense. You have to be aggressive and disrupt.

It's this upside-down world that we live in where we afford political correctness to the most intolerant group of individuals on the planet.

We're into this barrage of pop culture - you know, TV, movies, the Internet. We become creatures that we've made up, made of certain different flotsam from pop culture and certain different personas that are in style.

To me, marriage is the ultimate mystery.

There are no really new stories anymore.

I'm all for whatever transitions the book properly to a movie.

I'm a true-crime addict. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, but I can't stop.

I think mystery writers and thriller writers - whatever genre you want to call it - are taking on some of the biggest, most interesting kind of socioeconomic issues around in a really interesting, compelling way.

I have four or five ideas that just keep floating around and I want to kind of just let one - like a beautiful butterfly, let it land somewhere.

I grew up in the '80s where there's a lot of these kind of post-apocalyptic, post-comet, post-whatever it was, so that always captured my imagination a lot as a little kid, that idea of getting access to secret places and being able to roam around where you're not supposed to.