About forty percent of the people vote Democrat. About forty percent vote Republican. Of those eighty percent, most wouldn't change their votes if Adolf Hitler was running against Abe Lincoln - or against FDR. . . . That leaves twenty percent of the people who swing back one way or another . . . the true independents. . . . That twenty percent controls the destiny of the country.

I've been telling people for 12 years that if you want to get a nuclear device into the United States, just bring it through the port of Miami disguised as cocaine.

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.

(Stereotyping) is only for those without the imagination to see people as they are instead of being like someone else they understand.

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.