You see something scary, you should stand up and step toward it, not away from it. Instinctively, reflexively, in a raging fury.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

The way to write a thriller is to ask a question at the beginning, and answer it at the end.

I was in the machine. My whole life. Then the machine coughed and spat me out. So I thought, OK, if I'm out, I'm out. All the way out. I was a little angry and it was probably an immature reaction. But I got used to it.

He looked at the pain and he set himself apart from it. He saw it, examined it, identified it, corralled it. He isolated it. He challenged it. You against me? Dream on, pal. He built borders for it. Then walls. He built walls and forced the pain behind them and then he moved the walls inward, compressing the pain, crushing it, boxing it in, limiting it, beating it.

I write in the afternoon, from about 12 until 6 or 7. I use an upstairs room as my office. Once I get going I keep at it, and it usually takes about six months from the first blank screen until 'The End.

I don't care about the little guy. I just hate the big guy. I hate big smug people who think they can get away with things.