Tom Clancy Quotes

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Tom Clancy

Profession : Novelist

Birth : April 12, 1947

Collaboration on a book is the ultimate unnatural act.

Tom Clancy

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

Tom Clancy

Probably what pushed the Russians over the edge was SDI. They realized they couldn't beat us.

Tom Clancy

The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.

Tom Clancy

There was a time when nails were high-tech. There was a time when people had to be told how to use a telephone. Technology is just a tool. People use tools to improve their lives.

Tom Clancy

I was one of the first generations to watch television. TV exposes people to news, to information, to knowledge, to entertainment. How is it bad?

Tom Clancy

No matter what you or anyone else does, there will be someone who says that there's something bad about it.

Tom Clancy

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.

Tom Clancy

Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.

Tom Clancy

America is the most inventive country in the world because everybody has access to information.

Tom Clancy

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

Tom Clancy

Fundamentally, I think of myself as a storyteller, not a writer.

Tom Clancy

I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. If your name is in the Library of Congress, you're immortal.

Tom Clancy

Books and movies are different art forms with different rules. And because of that, they never translate exactly.

Tom Clancy

The only person who has artistic control is the director, and 'director' is how you spell God in Hollywood.

Tom Clancy

Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right.

Tom Clancy

I think about the characters I've created, and then I sit down and start typing and see what they will do. There's a lot of subconscious thought that goes on. It amazes me to find out, a few chapters later, why I put someone in a certain place when I did.

Tom Clancy

Before, it was always, 'Oh, no, here comes Clancy, that insurance agent.' Now it's, 'Oh, here comes Tom Clancy, bestselling author.' But I'm still the same basic middle-class slob.

Tom Clancy

The role of fiction is supposed to be divorced from the role of reality.

Tom Clancy