Clive Cussler

“I had horrible experiences in Hollywood.”

“I've always been a Civil War buff. In fact, the ships that always fascinated me the most were the ironclads, because they were the start of an era.”

“My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.”

“The truth is ships and aircraft have been vanishing with tragic regularity in every part of the world since they were invented.”

“I'm writing for entertainment. I like people to reach the end and feel they got their money's worth.”

“If you have some natural talent and really want to write, you should read the books of someone who's very successful in your genre. You don't want to plagiarize, but you want to learn from that author.”

“I'm always interested in something that's missing.”

“My job is to entertain the readers in such a manner that, when they reach the end of the book, they feel like they've gotten their money's worth.”

“If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.”

“NUMA is basically trying to preserve our maritime heritage by finding lost shipwrecks of historical significance before they are gone.”

“When I first started writing, I was in advertising at the time, I was doing most of my writing on weekends. I had studied most of the other series heroes and I figured it would be fun for mine to be different and put him in and around water. So I dreamed up Dirk Pitt.”