Privacy and loneliness were the traditional luxuries accorded to a skipper.

America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them.

Well, It's a Communist country, and the Communists do not reward personal initiative...except by execution.

Wars are begun by frightened men.

You learn to write the same way you learn to play golf... You do it, and keep doing it until you get it right. A lot of people think something mystical happens to you, that maybe the muse kisses you on the ear. But writing isn’t divinely inspired – it’s hard work.

There are only two ways we can be beaten: we die or we give up. And we're not giving up.

Giving your book to Hollywood is like turning your daughter over to a pimp.