"I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books to be read aloud, and I think of myself in that oral tradition."

"Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more."

"I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me."

"He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go."

"There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies, which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century, are now selling more oil than they find, and are thus in the throes of liquidation."

"The cardinal responsibility of leadership is to identify the dominant contradiction at each point of the historical process and to work out a central line to resolve it."

"You don't have to hold onto the pain to hold onto the memory."

"History never looks like history when you are living through it."