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.
George Bush is a fan of mine, he came to see me in the Seventies. His coke dealer brought him.
I wasn't a big science fiction aficionado, there were a few films like 2001 or Blade Runner that were favorites of mine, but since I started this series I have gained more respect for the genre and become more of a fan myself.
I have had lots of friends who've been affected by Aids and a very good friend of mine, Oscar Moore, died of Aids and I was with him in his last year quite a bit. And of course he was a man living in a very rich culture with a wealthy family who was able to afford health care.
In foreign policy, there are times when speaking with one voice - and it doesn't have to be mine - allows us to engage better on issues, and enables us to do things more effectively.
A friend of mine has a house with a basketball court and a pool. The guys go over and play basketball; I lie by the pool and nap in the sun. That defines me. That's consistent with who I am. I don't pretend to play basketball because I wanna feel like one of the guys. I wanna lie in the sun and relax.
My webmaster lives in Munich and is a very dear friend of mine. He is doing a great job on the site and it is constantly being updated and always will.
If I were dammed of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, mother o' mine o mother o' mine.
I like collaboration because, first of all, I'm good at writing lyrics. I don't know how to make beats. I don't play instruments. I'm not a good singer. So even when you see a solo album of mine, it's still a collaboration.
I want to break into the acting industry. It's something I have a great deal of respect for; it's a passion of mine. It's so amazing, the differences between acting and being an athlete, but the one commonality is they both evoke emotion in the viewer. And those emotions are real. So I think that's pretty cool.
If the interview was done in the studio, Frank McGee would automatically do it. But if I went out and got it, then the interview was mine. So I was considered a pushy cookie, because I would get the interview.
When you start out with goals - mine were to play polytonally and polyrhythmically - you never exhaust that. I started doing that in the 1940s. It's still a challenge to discover what can be done with just those two elements.
I'm slow by everybody's standards. But not by mine.
I mean, I've had bartenders and waiters and waitresses make a comment about a joke of mine, like pointing out some sort of logic error or something that I've never even thought about, and they're right.
Deep Throat is a guy who could have your files and mine in his trust.
What moves me is neither ethnocentric pride nor sectarian arrogance. I make no claim that Jewish culture is superior to other cultures. But it is mine.
I cannot follow you Christians; for you try to crawl through your life upon your knees, while I stride through mine on my feet.
There are so many times there could have been a left turn instead of a right turn in all people's lives. I think mine are pretty crystal clear, because of being adopted, being born in Ethiopia, being adopted to Sweden.
I don't eschew autobiographical writing, but I'm not interested in mine to be so straightforward. The things that tend to move me the most are often those that I have to figure out its meaning for myself. The human being's ability to make a metaphor to describe a human experience is just really cool.
I can still do clothing, movies, cartoons. I'mma get mine regardless. Whether I put an album out or not, I'm still gonna see a check.
There couldn't be better parents than mine, loving yet strict. They disciplined with love. A child without discipline is, in away, a lost child. You cannot have freedom without discipline.
In February of this year I returned to China to research my next book. The authorities know about the novels of mine that have been published in the west, including the latest one, Beijing Coma, about a student shot in Tiananmen Square, but so far have allowed me to return.
The voice muscle doesn't last forever. I have a lot of friends who are classical and opera singers. My friend Beverly Sills stopped singing in her 50s, so I'm careful with mine. But I'll keep going as long as it lets me.
People are hungry because they're eating empty foods. Mine are full, and so am I.
I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.
Mine is not an autonomous imagination.
I never get recognized for 'Mean Girls.' I can be walking around with Daniel Franzese, who's in the movie and a friend of mine, and people will come up to him and start freaking out and have no idea who I am.
Tom Hanks has been a huge idol of mine. I'd love to work with someone like him someday. You could learn a lot working with someone like that.
Food is a huge passion of mine, and because I want to eat whatever I want, I run every morning, and then I do weights a few times a week. It's just how I can balance eating pancakes in the morning, a big burger for lunch, and then a fat steak and cheesecake at night.
I recently reread an article of mine written in 1964, and I think it is still valid. There is not much difference. Many of the items on the agenda 37 years ago are still there.
I have siblings. And there are certain things I know that I can push their buttons. And they know they have certain things where they can push mine.
Everyone has a childhood, everyone had awkward years and weird stages. Mine were broadcast for eight years.
After high school, I drove out to L.A. with a friend of mine who had just graduated also, and I started auditioning. I got an agent, but it was all 'Saved By the Bell' auditions.
One of my songs was on a jazz station for awhile. It was a song that I wrote for a jazz sax player friend of mine, and I sang and played the guitar on it.
But in my heart of hearts, this is the kind of thing... this is what everyone is struggling with in their lives - relationships and family. To me, it's always an interesting area to mine. I'm drawn to it.
A very close friend of mine keeps reminding me that since about the age of 50, I've been saying, 'I'm finished. I haven't got another one in me.' But somehow you do.
