It's hard, Cotton. To let yourself love something you know you may never have.

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.

Happiness is learning to cope with stress effectively.

Man is so constituted that he then only excels other things when he knows himself.

Wolfhounds helped kill off the wolves in Ireland.

If I get a bad review, I dont take it personally because everyone is entitled to their opinion.

After [Tomas] Jefferson's defeat of [John] Adams in the presidential election of 1800, they didn't communicate with one another for more than a decade.

It's thrilling. There's birth and death and frustration and victory in raising horses. It's like a little microcosm of life is built into the short lives of these creatures.

There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.

The reason while we are in danger in this universe is this: We need the universe but the universe does not need us!

There is nothing more fun than hanging around with friends and banging on instruments. Anyone who has ever done it knows that this is true.

At times to think of one's outer helplessness is good, but to think always of one's inner strength is infinitely better.