Of all human lamentations, without doubt, the most common is if only I had known. But we can't know, and so days of death and fire so often begin no differently than those of love and warmth.

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.

All field agents have some cowboy in them – even the ones from New York.

It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you.

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.

In battle, you forgive a man anything except an unwillingness to take risks. Sometimes you have to put it on the line.