Quotes from James Patterson

I don't know why, but life is usually more complicated than the plans that we make.

If the White House could do more to tell parents that getting children reading is their business too, we'd see a big difference. Hollywood and the NBA or NFL could step in, too. In England they have an event called Book Day, where every child receives a pound to use at any bookstore.

My life revolves around my writing, my wife and my son.

Kids don't read as much as you'd like them to, just in terms of seeing the world from different perspectives. I mean, that's the great thing about books, still. Here's television, here are the movies, and it's pretty limited in terms of the perspectives.

There are terrific models for success with reluctant readers, but many school systems and state governments need to set aside their 'not invented here' and 'we have more important problems than education' attitudes.

The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is tha life actually goes on.

I'm very conscious that I'm an entertainer. Something like 73 percent of my readers are college graduates, so you can't condescend to people. You've got to tell them a story that they will be willing to pay money to read.

A lot of writers fall in love with their sentences or their construction of sentences, and sometimes that's great, but not everybody is Gabriel Garcia Marquez or James Joyce. A lot of people like to pretend that they are, and they wind up not giving people a good read or enlightening them.

Commercial books don't even get covered. The reason why so many book reviews go out of business is because they cover a lot of stuff that nobody cares about. Imagine if the movie pages covered none of the big movies and all they covered were movies that you couldn't even find in the theater?

When I was 26, I wrote my first mystery, 'The Thomas Berryman Number', and it was turned down by, I don't know, 31 publishers. Then it won an Edgar for Best First Novel. Go figure.

I don't smile as much as I should, even though I smile inside a lot.

Always expect the unexpected. Right around Thanksgiving, when the new Alex Cross will be out. It's called Four Blind Mice and it's a pretty amazing story about several murders inside the military.

Half the time when brothers wrestle, it's just an excuse to hug each other.

What I'm really addicted to is getting people to understand that if their kids aren't competent readers coming out of middle school, it's really going to be hard for them in high school.

Schools and parents can team up to find books that kids will really get excited about - that will make them say, 'That was a great experience. Now I know why people get excited about reading.'

I get up every morning and chop wood, and I pretty much do it seven days a week, and I like to do it. I still have time for my wife and my son, who's 14, and at this point, my head is still above water.

Somebody said the key to life is to work hard, play hard, rest hard, and I've pretty much adopted that.

She didn't flirt with him, but they hung out together a lot, and every time I saw their heads bent over a computer screen or map, it made my stomach clench. And my teeth. And my fists.

Being the leader means you have to make life or death decisions sometimes.

Can you giggle while racing for your life and protecting a six-year-old? I can.

Advanced life-forms, my seweet patootie. Jerks. Both of them.

Just in case you thought elephants were all sweetness, I can attest to the fact that this one had the time of her life scaring the bejeezus out of those dudes.

I write larger than life. It's what I do.

...Drifting downstream in a row boat doesn't count against your life span.