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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.

-Tom Clancy

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You Learn To Write

Tom Clancy

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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.

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I Was One Of The First Generations To Watch Television. Tv Exposes People To News, To Information, To Knowledge, To Entertainment. How Is It Bad?

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.

Fundamentally, I Think Of Myself As A Storyteller, Not A Writer.

Never Ask What Sort Of Computer A Guy Drives. If He's A Mac User, He'll Tell You. If Not, Why Embarrass Him?

Surviving Is Much More Painful Than Death.

I Think About The Characters I've Created And Then I Sit Down And Start Typing And See What They Will Do. There's A Lot Of Subconscious Thought That Goes On. It Amazes Me To Find Out, A Few Chapters Later, Why I Put Someone In A Certain Place When I Did. It's Spooky.

If You Want To Kick The Tiger In His Ass You'd Better Have A Plan For Dealing With His Teeth

The Only Way To Do All The Things You'd Like To Do Is To Read

Liberation And Equal-rights Issues Notwithstanding, It Was A Man's Job To Make A Woman Feel Cherished And Respected.

Fighting Wars Is Not So Much About Killing People As It Is About Finding Things Out. The More You Know, The More Likely You Are To Win A Battle.

The Control Of Information Is Something The Elite Always Does, Particularly In A Despotic Form Of Government. Information, Knowledge, Is Power. If You Can Control Information, You Can Control People.

Knowledge And Power

Information Knowledge

The Point Of Life Was To Press On, To Do The Best You Can, To Make The World A Better Place.

Nothing Is As Real As A Dream. The World Can Change Around You, But Your Dream Will Not... Responsibilities Need Not Erase It. Duties Need Not Obscure It... Because The Dream Is Within You. No One Can Take Your Dream Away.

Every Novel Begins With The Speculative Question, What If "x" Happened? That's How You Start.

Christ, How Did You Ever Get This Screwed Up! His Mind Demanded Of Him. He Knew The Answer, But Even That Was Not A Full Explanation. Different Segments Of The Organism Called John Terrance Kelly Knew Different Parts Of The Whole Story, But Somehow They'd Never All Come Together, Leaving The Separate Fragments Of What Had ...once Been A Tough, Smart, Decisive And To Blunder About In Confusion - And Despair! There Was A Happy Thought.

Ice Hockey Is The Closest Thing To Religion Permitted By The Soviet Union.

I Don't Discuss Works In Progress.

Work In Progress

To Ronald Wilson Regan, The Fortieth President Of The United States: The Man Who Won The War.

Privacy And Loneliness Were The Traditional Luxuries Accorded To A Skipper.

When You Have Stopped Learning You Have Begun To Die.

Even True Believers Had Consciences, Too Bad.

Being A Victim Is More Palatable Than Having To Recognize The Intrinsic Contradictions Of One's Own Governing Philosophy.

There Is An Old Saying: In History Nothing Is True But The Names And Dates. In Fiction Everything Is True But The Names And Dates. The Difference Between Reality And Fiction? Fiction Has To Make Sense.

Wars Are Begun By Frightened Men. They Fear War, But More Than That, They Fear What Will Happen If They Don't Start One Or Take Equivalent Action, I Suppose.

The General Difference Between Conservatives And Liberals Is That Liberals Like Pretty Pictures And Conservatives Like To Build Bridges That People Can Drive Across.

I Just Finished Reading The Koran, And There's Nothing In There I Didn't Hear In Sunday School.

I Do Not Over-intellectualise The Production Process. I Try To Keep It Simple: Tell The Damned Story.

Most Things In Here Don't React Well To Bullets.

I Write Strictly For Fun... As Long As It Stays Fun I'll Continue To Do It.

Success Will Ruin Your Life.

There Are People In Government Who Don't Want Other People To Know What They Know. It's Just Another Example Of Elitism. And I Spit On Elitism. Show Me An Elitist, And I'll Show You A Loser.

No Matter What You Or Anyone Else Does, There Will Be Someone Who Says That There's Something Bad About It.

They Fought Their First Action In March Of 1775. Embarked On Eight Small Ships, They Sailed To The Bahamas And Captured A British Fort Near Nassau, Seizing Gunpowder And Supplies. Later, During The Revolutionary War, Marines Fought Several Engagements In Their Distinctive Green Coats, Such As Helping George Washington To Cross The Delaware River, And Assisting John Paul Jones On The Bonhomme Richard To Capture The British Frigate Serapis During Their Famous Sea Fight.

We Cannot Fail To Win Unless We Fail To Try.

I'm A Spy. It's Not Really... I Worked For The Cia 15 Years. The Cover Was I Worked For The Insurance Business.

There Are Two Kinds Of People: The Ones Who Need To Be Told And The Ones Who Figure It Out All By Themselves.

Anti-catholicism Is The Last Respectable Prejudice. You Can't Hate Black People Anymore, Of Course, And You Can't Hate Homosexuals Anymore, But You Can Hate All The Catholics You Want.

She Didn't Strike Me As A "crossword In Ink" Kind Of Girl

The Good Of The People Was A Laudable Enough Goal, But In Denying A Man's Soul, An Enduring Part Of His Being, Marxism Stripped Away The Foundation Of Human Dignity And Individual Value. It Also Cast Aside The Objective Measure Of Justice And Ethics Which, He Decided, Was The Principal Legacy Of Religion To Civilized Life.

One Thing About Flying That He Never Got Used To Was That No Matter How Awful The Weather Was On The Ground, If You Flew High Enough You Could Always Find The Sun.

Courage Is Being The Only Only One Who Knows How Terrified You Are.

Every Person You Meet - And Everything You Do In Life - Is An Opportunity To Learn Something.

Opportunities To Learn

If A Hero Must Have An Unmarked Grave, It Should At Least Be Close To Where His Comrades Fell." "comrades?" "one Way Or Another We All Fight For The Things We Believe In. Doesn't That Give Us Some Common Ground?

An Overnight Success Is Ten Years In The Making.

Overnight Success

America Is The Most Inventive Country In The World. Why? Because Everybody Has Access To Information. In The Soviet Union It Was Illegal To Take A Photograph Of A Train Station. Look What Happened To Them.

The Tactics...no, Amateurs Discuss Tactics,.... Professional Soldiers Study Logistics.

Civilians Listened To Officers, Which Said A Lot About The Intelligence Of Civilians.

The Human Condition Today Is Better Than It's Ever Been, And Technology Is One Of The Reasons For That.

The Smaller The Mind, The Greater The Ego.

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.

Lost Friendship

That's The Ultimate Pornography. There's Nothing More Pornographic Than Glorifying War.

Collaboration On A Book Is The Ultimate Unnatural Act.

Success Is A Finished Book, A Stack Of Pages Each Of Which Is Filled With Words. If You Reach That Point, You Have Won A Victory Over Yourself No Less Impressive Than Sailing Single-handed Around The World.

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"literature" Is Written Material That, 100 Years After The Death Of The Author, Is Forced Upon High School Students.

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Sunday Was The Normal Day For The Political Awareness Session At Sea. Ordinarily Putin Would Have Officiated, Reading Some Pravada Editorials, Followed By Selected Quotations From The Works Of Lenin And A Discussion Of The Lessons To Be Learned From The Readings. It Is Very Much Like A Church Service.

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The Most Wounding Insult To An Educated Russian Was To Be Called Nekulturny-uncultured-yet The Same Men Who Sat In The Gilt Boxes At The Moscow State Opera Weeping At The End Of A Performance Of Boris Gudunov Could Immediately Turn Around And Order The Execution Or Imprisonment Of A Hundred Men Without Blinking. A Strange People, Made More Strange By Their Political Philosophy.

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Bill Clinton Is A Man Who Thinks International Affairs Means Dating A Girl From Out Of Town.

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I Wanted To See My Name On The Cover Of A Book. If Your Name Is In The Library Of Congress, You're Immortal.

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Brilliant Ideas

Wars Are Begun By Frightened Men.

Life Is About Learning; When You Stop Learning, You Die.

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It Is A Principle Of Diplomacy That One Must Know Something Of The Truth In Order To Lie Convincingly.

I Haven't Got Any Fan Mail From Osama Bin Laden. I Have No Reason To Believe He Reads My Stuff I'll Never Decide For Commercial Reasons To Put Something In That Endangers Our National Security. You Just Can't Do That.

What Do I Know About Sex? I’m A Married Man.

I've Made Up Stuff That's Turned Out To Be Real, That's The Spooky Part.

What The Government Is Good At Is Collecting Taxes, Taking Away Your Freedoms And Killing People. It's Not Good At Much Else.

Libertarian Party

Giving Your Book To Hollywood Is Like Turning Your Daughter Over To A Pimp.

There Used To Be This Country Called The Soviet Union; It's Not There Anymore. Our Technology Was Better Than Theirs.

Fix Your Eyes Forward On What You Can Do, Not Back On What You Cannot Change.

Well, It's A Communist Country, And The Communists Do Not Reward Personal Initiative...except By Execution.

And So Began Something That Had Not Quite Begun And Would Not Soon End, With Many People In Many Places Moving Off In Directions And On Missions Which They All Mistakenly Thought They Understood. That Was Just As Well. The Future Was Too Fearful For Contemplation, And Beyond The Expected, Illusory Finish Lines Were Things Fated By The Decisions Made This Morning -- And, Once Decided, Best Unseen.

I Am A Politician Which Means I Am A Liar And A Crook. When I Am Not Kissing Babies I Am Stealing Their Lollypops.

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.

Information, Knowledge, Is Power. If You Can Control Information, You Can Control People.

Knowledge And Power

Information Knowledge

I Do Not Over-intellectualize The Production Process. I Try To Keep It Simple: Tell The Damned Story.

My Life Is A Very Simple Life Thank You

Two Questions Form The Foundation Of All Novels: "what If?" And "what Next?" (a Third Question, "what Now?", Is One The Author Asks Himself Every 10 Minutes Or So; But It's More A Cry Than A Question.) Every Novel Begins With The Speculative Question, What If "x" Happened? That's How You Start.

People Live Longer Today Than They Ever Have. They Live Happier Lives, Have More Knowledge, More Information. All This Is The Result Of Communications Technology. How Is Any Of That Bad?

Life Was Such A Strange Thing, So Permanent When One Had It, So Fleeting When It Was Lost- And Those Who Lost It Could Never Tell You What It Was Like, Could They?

Speak Your Dialogue Out Loud. If It Sounds Like The Way People Talk, Then Write It Down.

The Only Real Difference Between A Wise Man And A Fool, Moore Knew, Was That The Wise Man Tended To Make More Serious Mistakes—and Only Because No One Trusted A Fool With Really Crucial Decisions; Only The Wise Had The Opportunity To Lose Battles, Or Nations.

(stereotyping) Is Only For Those Without The Imagination To See People As They Are Instead Of Being Like Someone Else They Understand.

People, I Am Actually Fairly Smart. Why Has This Not Occurred To Anyone? The Information Is All Out There, If You Go Looking For It, And The Classified Stuff Just Comes From Analyzing The Unclassified Stuff And Connecting The Dots.

Suspense Is Achieved By Information Control: What You Know. What The Reader Knows. What The Characters Know.

Victory Comes Only To Those Prepared To Make It, And Take It.

In Battle, You Forgive A Man Anything Except An Unwillingness To Take Risks. Sometimes You Have To Put It On The Line.

Back In Pre-revolutionary America Cruel And Unusual Punishment Meant The Rack And Burning At The Stake... In More Recent Rulings It Has Been Taken To Mean The Absence Of Cable Television And Denial Of Sex-change Operations, Or Just Overcrowding In The Prisons.

Switzerland Is A Land Where Crime Is Virtually Unknown, Yet Most Swiss Males Are Required By Law To Keep In Their Homes What Amounts To A Portable, Personal Machine Gun.

I'd Rather Talk To People Who Do Things Than Complain About Other People Who Do Things. I Say They're Idiots.

Books And Movies Are Different Art Forms With Different Rules. And Because Of That, They Never Translate Exactly.

In The Soviet Union It Was Illegal To Take A Photograph Of A Train Station. Look What Happened To Them. They Tried To Classify Everything.

For Over Two Weeks, The Defenders Of Wake Island Held Off A Vastly Superior Force Of Japanese Ships And Troops, Inspiring The Whole Nation With Their Plucky Spirit And Sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy Leaders At Pearl Harbor, Struggling To Protect What Was Left Of The Shattered Pacific Fleet, Canceled A Relief Mission, Allowing The Island And Its Defenders To Fall Without Support. Wake Damaged The Long-standing Trust Between The Corps And The Navy, A Memory That Still Rankles Marines And Shames Sailors.

About Forty Percent Of The People Vote Democrat. About Forty Percent Vote Republican. Of Those Eighty Percent, Most Wouldn't Change Their Votes If Adolf Hitler Was Running Against Abe Lincoln - Or Against Fdr. . . . That Leaves Twenty Percent Of The People Who Swing Back One Way Or Another . . . The True Independents. . . . That Twenty Percent Controls The Destiny Of The Country.

I Think It's Going To Be Remembered As The Last Major War On Planet Earth, If We're Lucky, If We Maintain Our Foreign Policy Properly. It Will Be Remembered As The Last Time Major Countries Had To Put People In The Field And Put Them In Harm's Way. It May Be The Last Of All Human Nature Wars, Which Is A Nice Way To Remember Any Kind Of A War, As The Last One.

I've Been Telling People For 12 Years That If You Want To Get A Nuclear Device Into The United States, Just Bring It Through The Port Of Miami Disguised As Cocaine.

The Kgb Still Killed People, The Kgb Would Not Execute Its Last Prisoner Until The Final Days Of Its Existence In 1991, But By The Eighties A Termination Required Paperwork And Signatures And A Post-action Review.

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.

All Field Agents Have Some Cowboy In Them – Even The Ones From New York.

There Was A Time When Nails Were High-tech. There Was A Time When People Had To Be Told How To Use A Telephone. Technology Is Just A Tool. People Use Tools To Improve Their Lives.

Probably What Pushed The Russians Over The Edge Was Sdi... They Realized They Couldn't Beat Us...

The U.s. Military Is Us. There Is No Truer Representation Of A Country Than The People That It Sends Into The Field To Fight For It. The People Who Wear Our Uniform And Carry Our Rifles Into Combat Are Our Kids, And Our Job Is To Support Them, Because They're Protecting Us.

The Only Person Who Has Artistic Control Is The Director, And 'director' Is How You Spell God In Hollywood.

Washington D.c. Is About 300 Square Miles Surrounded By Realty.

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.

The Difference Between Me And You Is That I Do Good Fiction.

Nothing Is As Real As A Dream. The World Can Change About You, But Your Dream Will Not. It Will Always Be Your Link With The Person, Young And Full Of Hope. If You Hold On To It You May Grow Old But You Will Never Be Old. And That Is The Ultimate Success

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