As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not vindicated. Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

I'm scattered, and then that last hundred pages, bam, I'm a laser.

I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about.

Why waste time trying to discover the truth, when you can so easily create it?

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

But protagonists are protagonists and heroes are heroes.

Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let people at least believe that justice can be achieved and the right outcomes can occur.

I'm a wicked ping-pong player.

I'm ever curious about the world. I'm driven to go out and find new things to write about. Having a vivid imagination is also a plus.

I'm tired of people screaming about price and forgetting about the content.

In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all.

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

People have given me classified information, but always with the disclaimer 'This can never end up in a book.' And it never does.

People who have expertise just love to share it. That's human nature.

Some people take 10 years to write a book and some can do one in under a year.

I look for material that both interest me and challenges me. If I am drawn to the material and I have to work hard at it, the characters and the plots reflect the hours and hours of research.

I'd read a lot of thrillers about politicians and presidents, but never one where you flip the stereotypes and make good people bad and bad people good.

The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Ft. Benning, Ga., for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like.