“On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?”

“On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?”

“You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.”

“As much as I like it when a book I'm writing speeds along, the downside can be that an author becomes too eager to finish and rushes the end. The end is even more important than the first page, and rushing can damage it.”

“Before I start a project, I always ask myself the following question. Why is this book worth a year of my life? There needs to be something about the theme, the technique, or the research that makes the time spent on it worthwhile.”

“He strode with the weight of robbed innocence and a stolen childhood, for a life time of pain and anger, of terror and death."- Frank Balenger”

“His blank face communicated an emptiness that could never be filled"- Frank Balenger”

“if people weren't sinners, every intelligence network would be out of business”

“I suppose none of what I'm saying matters. In a few years a search like this won't even be necessary. We have instruments now that can be mounted on the underside of an airplane. To find a man all you have to do is fly over the spot where you think he is, and the machine will register his body heat. Right now there aren't enough of those machines to go around. Most of them are in the war. But when we come home from there, well, a man on the run won't have hope. And a man like me, he won't be needed. This is the last of something. It's too bad. As much as I hate war, I fear the day when machines take the place of men. At least now a man can still get along on his talents.”

“His name was Rambo, and he was just some nothing kid for all anybody knew, standing by the pump of a gas station at the outskirts of Madison, Kentucky.”

“i've heard this called st. peter's square," arlene said. "but it isn't square. it's oval.”

“On every page, confidence fights with self-doubt. Every sentence is an act of faith. Why would anybody want to do it?”