“I have a long-standing interest in what I like to think of as “forbidden knowledge”: methods of unarmed killing, lock picking, breaking and entry, spy stuff, and other things that the government wants only a few select individuals to know.”

I love Japan, and Tokyo is my favorite city.

It would be awesome to be so impressive that we could sway people to our way of thinking just by declaiming our thoughts, but probably most of us lack such gravitas. Luckily, there’s something even better: evidence, logic, and argument.

Paper publishers are doing everything they can to slow the transition to eBooks because, in a digital world, paper publishers’ high hardback margins essentially disappear.

If the reader cares, I dont think it matters so much whether your hero is in fact an anti-hero.

If you focus on the risks, they’ll multiply in your mind and eventually paralyze you. You want to focus on the task, instead, on doing what needs to be done.

The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you’re most at risk.

After I sold my screenplay adaptation of ‘Rain Fall’ to Sony Pictures, I had no more creative involvement.

I make a good living selling hardback books through paper publishers and I have many friends in the industry who will suffer as it changes, so on a personal level the transition to digital isn’t something I welcome wholeheartedly.

I can understand the allure of a venerable Big Six imprint, of a shot at the New York Times list, of a publisher-sponsored book tour, of seeing your hardbacks in bookstores and your paperbacks in supermarkets.

The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.

Publishing for me is a business, not an ideology.

The National Surveillance State doesn’t want anyone to be able to communicate without the authorities being able to monitor that communication.

The City. Can’t you hear it? People. Machines. Even thoughts so thick your bones feel it and your ear almost catches it.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it’s a big bureaucratic place. Think ‘post office with spies.’

The post office actually achieves its mission. I wish we could say the same of the CIA.

Anger, and the self-righteousness that is both the cause and consequence of anger, tends to be easier on the psyche than personal responsibility.

Life has now taught me that love for things,

I’m a very introverted guy, so I don’t need to be around people for as long as someone who’s very extroverted to get that sort of social fix per se.

As a fighter pilot I know from my own experiences how decisive surprise and luck can be for success

It is true to say that the first kill can influence the whole future career of a fighter pilot.

I think Hillary Clinton is right. I think it isn’t enough to leave [Bashir] Assad in place, because as long as he is there, there is going to be a recruiting magnet for ISIS.

I don’t think anyone can predict what the short term will look like. In the long term, it will be a Syria without Bashar Assad

Deadlines refine the mind. They remove variables like exotic materials and processes that take too long.

If I haven’t had any long term psychological side effects from all the things I’ve already done on this show, this isn’t gonna hurt much more.