The CIA’s research program is described in a book called The Search for the Manchurian Candidate.

Culture clash is terrific drama.

The research is the easiest. The outline is the most fun. The first draft is the hardest, because every word of the outline has to be fleshed out. The rewrite is very satisfying.

For success, the author must make the reader care about the destiny of the principals, and sustain this anxiety, or suspense, for about 100,000 words.

The thriller is the most popular literary genre of the 20th century.

I don’t think there’s any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.

There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

I enjoy learning technical details.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Thrillers have been traditionally very masculine books; the women characters often rather decorative.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn’t happen, but it might have.

We were young and had the arrogance of youth, nevertheless when you look at the issues we fought over, I think by and large we were right.

We all now tell stories by cutting from one dramatic scene to the next, whereas Victorian novelists felt free to write long passages of undramatic summary.

I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.

There is a real connection between Philosopy and fiction.

When I’m writing a woman character, I don’t think, ‘What would a woman do?’ I just think, ‘What would this character do in this situation?’

In my books, women often solve the problem. Even if the woman is not the hero, she’s a strong character. She does change the plot. She’ll often rescue the male character from some situation.

James Bond is quite serious about his drinks and clothing and cigarettes and food and all that sort of thing. There is nothing wry or amused about James Bond.

World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will...

It was the most romantic plane ever made.

Most of my stories have some basis in fact.

A very good editor is almost a collaborator.

With hindsight, we see that the Soviet Union never had a chance of world domination, but we didn’t know that then.

Movies have influenced all writers, not just thriller writers.

An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.

My favorite period is World War II, and I’m in the middle of writing my fourth novel set in that era.

Be a perfectionist.