Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don't take chances then you'll never have a winning hand, and I've no regrets.

And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

Writing is a solitary occupation.

I'm fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.

Television is a young person's medium.

So the books have a greater appeal to a British audience, but that hasn't stopped them making best-seller lists in places like Brazil, Japan and at least a dozen other countries.

Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.

One book at a time... though I'm usually doing the research for others while I'm writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written - and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive.

Agents will read unpublished work because they might make money, and that's their job. It isn't mine.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold... doesn't bear thinking about, but I suppose we'd have made it work somehow.

Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.

I'll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.

Looking back, of course, it was irresponsible, mad, forlorn, idiotic, but if you don't take chances then you'll never have a winning hand, and I've no regrets.

It's fun. I sit down every day and tell stories. Some folk would kill to get that chance.

So far it's 43 books in 25 years.

What I mean by that is that the point of life, as I see it, is not to write books or scale mountains or sail oceans, but to achieve happiness, and preferably an unselfish happiness.

I know nothing about producing TV drama and any involvement on my part is liable to prove an obstacle to the producers, so I prefer to be a cheerleader and let them get on with it.

Anyone who claims to have an entirely clear conscience is almost certainly a bore.

Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you're writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.

Judy couldn't move to Britain for family reasons, so I had to come to the States, and the U.S. government wouldn't give me a Green Card, so I airily told her I'd write a book.

I volunteered for this life, wanted it and am not going to bitch about it now that I've got it.

At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.

We all suffer from dreams.

Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man.

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent.

About the only time losing is more fun than winning is when you're fighting temptation.

The fame aspect of winning the Masters... besides being married and becoming a father, that's a strong third there.

We were succeeding. When you looked at specifics, this became a war of attrition. We were winning.

I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.

Politics is about winning. If you don't win, you don't get to put your principles into practice. Therefore, find a way to win, or sit the battle out.

There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agenst or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.

I had to do something special coming in. I didn't do it, so I had to do it in the playoff. Winning the Mercedes is awesome. Winning three times is a dream come true.

As an alcoholic, you have no appreciation for your wife or your children's feelings, but I'm making up for that now. I'm winning my children's trust back.

The key to winning is poise under stress.

We have to say now we think the character of the party has changed so far it will take something very exceptional, something really out of the ordinary line to make us be convinced there's a chance of winning back the party.

Show class, have pride, and display character. If you do, winning takes care of itself.

What I want out of tennis is not necessarily just winning.

It's real nice and exciting for me to break the records, but it's more exciting for me to be on a winning team.

Any form of a winning record in the conference is an accomplishment.

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.

The key to a winning season is focusing on one opponent at a time. Winning one week at a time. Never look back and never look ahead.

Winning is about heart, not just legs. It's got to be in the right place.

I don't know how to put it, but yet you know we have so many people who the way they look at life, the way they work depends on what happens, us winning or losing. It's kind of crazy. So, I kind of got caught up in that, I'm gonna try to stay away from that.

How you play the game is for college ball. When you're playing for money, winning is the only thing that matters.

I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.

I think I went on a nice winning streak of about 20 fights until I fought Jorge Reyes and he stopped me in 6 rounds after I punched myself out.

The only plan the Administration seems to have for winning the war is that there is no plan and no schedule for our troops to come home and get out of harm's way.

The first big break was winning a scholarship to go to Cambridge University. I was very lucky, because my parents couldn't have afforded a university education for me. Without a scholarship I couldn't possibly have gone.