Usually halfway through a book I have a serious depression, so I go on safari on my ranch in South Africa, or fishing off my island in the Seychelles. When I come back and re-read it, I think: 'What was all that about, Smith? It's fine, just get on with it.'

I know it's politically incorrect but I enjoy things like the kick boxing and cock fighting.

I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.

It was this same Jesus, the Christ who, among many other remarkable things, said and repeated something which, proceeding from any other being would have condemned him at once as either a bloated egotist or a dangerously unbalanced person...when He said He himself would rise again from the dead, the third day after He was crucified, He said something that only a fool would dare say, if he expected longer the devotion of any disciples-unless He was sure He was going to rise. No founder of any world religion known to men ever dared say a thing like that!

I don't want children. Why should I let some strange little monster into my life to destroy what to me is a perfect set-up?

I want to be seen as a good storyteller. I'm a manipulator as well.

All my characters have got a big slice of me in them. A big piece of me, because it's my dialogue and this is the way I think and talk.