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Two questions form the foundation of all novels: What if? and What next? (A third question, What now?, is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if X happened? That's how you start.

Tom Clancy

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Tom Clancy
Age: 66 †
Born: 1947
Born: April 12
Died: 2013
Died: October 1
Non-Fiction Writer
Novelist
Prosaist
Writer
Baltimore
Maryland
Thomas Leo Clancy Jr.
Thomas Leo Tom Clancy Jr.
Thomas Leo Tom Clancy
Jr.
Thomas Clancy
Thomas L. Clancy
Next
Foundation
Two
Questions
Speculative
Form
Novel
Novels
Every
Minutes
Author
Question
Third
Happened
Thirds
Asks
Begins
Start
Cry

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I write strictly for fun... as long as it stays fun I'll continue to do it.
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Sunday was the normal day for the political awareness session at sea. Ordinarily Putin would have officiated, reading some Pravada editorials, followed by selected quotations from the works of Lenin and a discussion of the lessons to be learned from the readings. It is very much like a church service.
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I just finished reading the Koran, and there's nothing in there I didn't hear in Sunday school.
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America is the most inventive country in the world. Why? Because everybody has access to information. In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them.
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Wars are begun by frightened men.
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Anti-Catholicism is the last respectable prejudice. You can't hate black people anymore, of course, and you can't hate homosexuals anymore, but you can hate all the Catholics you want.
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Whenever somebody comes up with a good idea, there's somebody else who has never had a good idea in his life who stands up and says, Oh, you can't do that...
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Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.
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Washington D.C. is about 300 square miles surrounded by realty.
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The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us.
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The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.
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It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.
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The tactics...no, amateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics.
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Keep at it! The one talent that's indispensable to a writer is persistence. You must write the book, else there is no book. It will not finish itself. Do not try to commit art. Just tell the damned story.
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Nothing is as real as a dream. The world can change about you, but your dream will not. It will always be your link with the person, young and full of hope. If you hold on to it you may grow old but you will never be old. And that is the ultimate success
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Surviving is much more painful than death.
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Literature is written material that, 100 years after the death of the author, is forced upon high school students.
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There are two kinds of people: the ones who need to be told and the ones who figure it out all by themselves.
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I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you're immortal.
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Every person you meet - and everything you do in life - is an opportunity to learn something.
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