Quotes from Tom Clancy

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

I understand why we do that now. It's a help, not a threat. It's something to remind you how important words are. Ideas are important. Principles are important. Words are important. Your word is the most important of all. Your word is who you are.

An overnight success is ten years in the making.

Time is something that fills the empty spaces of life

Surviving is much more painful than death.

Even true believers had consciences, Too bad.

Most things in here don't react well to bullets.

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.

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

Things rarely happen for a single reason. Even the cleverest and most skilled manipulators recognize that their real art lies in making use of that which they cannot predict.

I don't discuss works in progress.

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.

"Literature" is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.

Surviving is much more painful than death.

Courage was not something one picked out of the air. It was something like a bank account. You could withdraw only so much before it was necessary to stop, to take the time to make new deposits.

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.

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