No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there’s something bad about it.
In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to put it on the line.
Victory comes only to those prepared to make it, and take it.
Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he’s a Mac user, he’ll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?
I’ve been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine.
The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.
Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.
We cannot fail to win unless we fail to try.
The Only way to do all the things you’d like to do is to read.
People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?
Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world.
I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you’re immortal.
If you want to kick the tiger in his ass you’d better have a plan for dealing with his teeth.
I’d rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they’re idiots.
I haven’t got any fan mail from Osama bin Laden. I have no reason to believe he reads my stuff I’ll never decide for commercial reasons to put something in that endangers our national security. You just can’t do that.
There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.
The smaller the mind, the greater the ego.
Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.
I don’t discuss works in progress...
That’s the ultimate pornography There’s nothing more pornographic than glorifying war.