I wanted to be some kind of captain of industry. Then I wanted to be in advertising, and then I wanted to be a newspaper reporter.

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

Why do you have to be the same as the others? ...Most of them are stupid.

She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.

When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.

Having faith in God did not mean sitting back and doing nothing. It meant believing you would find success if you did your best honestly and energetically.

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

Trusting someone was like holding a little water in your cupped hands - it was so easy to spill the water, and you could never get it back.

The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you.

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she's a strong character. She does change the plot. She'll often rescue the male character from some situation.

In both cases, weakness and scruples had defeated strength and ruthlessness.

Change was not something you waited for, quietly, mutely, in a house by the ocean, nothing would ever change unless we forced it into shape.

Live each day with positive affirmations

Heaven is not a republic.

Trying to second-guess Tegan was like trying to track a tornado. A tornado he had no business chasing.

The drugs took over and she fell asleep then.Only her face was visible, the medical equipment acting as some hideous hijab for her.

I wondered about the science of storms and how sometimes it seemed that a storm wanted to break the world and how the world refused to break.

We have the world's best military, even though he (President Barack Obama) has done everything he can to diminish it.

Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness.

Harmelody allows everybody to be an individual who does not have to imitate anybody else.

We were coming from a completely different place, which was saying "sound" is what you want to define it as, and you can shape it into music in whichever way you want.