You can be the smartest person in the world - which Bill Clinton is, and if he's not, his wife is - and care more than anybody else in the world - which he does, I don't doubt that for a minute. And you can care so much that you're willing to be dishonest - you can tell people one thing but do another because you really know it's for their own good. And you'll still screw it all up. Because the whole premise of what you're doing is wrong!

The Mollusks—generous hosts when they weren’t trying to kill you.

I never start a section of the story without knowing how it will end. I also consciously try to shape the story as though it were a movie.

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.

The story you envision as you start out is always a great story; when the facts turn out to be different from, or more complex than, what you expected, your first reaction is always disappointment. That's when you must fight the urge to bend the story to your preconceived notions. First, it's dishonest. And second, in the end, the truth is always the best story.

I've been checking with people back in South Florida to see if Hurricane Dennis is going to whack my house, and the consensus of the experts seems to be: No, it will not, unless it does, in which case, yes. So I'm feeling really calm over here in London.

The problem was that Panama technically belonged to Colombia, which refused to sign a treaty leasing it to the United States. So Roosevelt sent a gunboat filled with marines down to Panama, just on the off chance that a revolution might suddenly break out, and darned if one didn't, two days later. Not only that, but the leaders of the new nation of Panama-talk about lucky breaks!-were absolutely thrilled to have the United States build a canal there. 'Really, it's our pleasure,' they told the marines, adding, 'Don't shoot.'