Did it [cocaine] for about eight years. Not a terribly long time to be an addict I guess, but it is longer than World War II.

Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That's what makes them children.

...knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity's engine.

Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.

She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet.

A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

I have two amazing things in my life: I'm pain-free and I'm debt-free.