Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.

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 felt alienated by the experience and decided to stay away from corporate employment.

The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling.

So, how to stay inside the world of entertainment without actually getting another job? I felt the only logical answer was to become a novelist. So I wrote the first book - driven by some very real feelings of desperation - and it worked.

I'm not really into gourmet food; I'm the kind of guy who just stops by a place that looks good rather than heading for the restaurant of the moment.

I'm not afraid of death. Death's afraid of me.