Don't try to write too much in a single session. One thousand words a day is quite enough. Stop after about four or five hours.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.

Everyone thinks politics will just go on the way it is. I don't agree.

A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody book that’s ever been written.

What is leadership, after all, but the blind choice of one route over another and the confident pretense that the decision was based on reason

First comes an idea. Then, characters begin to evolve out of the landscape of that idea. And then, finally, characters dominate: plot is simply a function of what these people might do or be. Everything has to flow from their personalities; otherwise it will not be emotionally engaging, or plausible.