David Baldacci

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

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

“But protagonists are protagonists and heroes are heroes.”

“But the fact is, as one grows close to death, the only thing that matters is family. I hope you can see that.”

“Can't say a body ever gets used to hard work”

“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’ve fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, ‘My God is better than your God.’ Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn’t matter. Someone will tell you you’re wrong, and he’ll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we’re just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.”

“But then he put aside the awkward encounter, which his mind allowed him to do quite easily. He could compartmentalize at an astonishing level. It came from not giving a shit.”

“For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant.”

“She glanced around at the tombstones. “You’re surrounded by death here. Way too depressing. You really might want to think about getting another job.”“You see death and sadness in these sunken patches of dirt, I see lives lived fully and the good deeds of past generations influencing the future ones.”

“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.”

“Depending on the situation, sometimes you can know a person better in ten minutes than someone you have crossed paths with all your life.”

“Dark, cool, musty, smoky, where light fell funny and everyone looked like someone you knew or wanted to know. Or, more likely, wanted to forget.”

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

“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.”

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

“All you have to do [to win a Pulitzer Prize] is spend your life running from one awful place to another, write about every horrible thing you see. The civilized world reads about it, then forgets it, but pats you on the head for doing it and gives you a reward as appreciation for changing nothing.”

“It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.”

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

“Why can't people just sit and read books and be nice to each other?”