I start every book with something that outrages me. I'm outraged by the FBI, the CIA, and computers that seem to have catalogued our lives. Power too often is accompanied by irresponsibility.

I don't believe that my first name is Leo or that my last name is Tolstoy. I'm a storyteller.

He may be a scholar, but he’s first a man who believes – with certain justification – that he was betrayed by his government.

It’s a geometric puzzle; it can happen in any combination of ways. Physically or psychologically – or a little of both. It can be permanent or temporary, all or part. No rules!

There’s a rift in this country between the people and its leaders. There is corruption at the highest levels of government; it goes beyond mere power politics. The Constitution has been seriously assaulted, our way of life threatened.

Because the physical conduits that permit and transmit those memories have been altered. Physically rearranged to the point where they no longer function as they once did. For all intents and purposes, they’ve been destroyed.

The mind plays tricks. It rejects things until it thinks – or something tells it – that the remembering can be handled.

You know, Mr. Webb, you have two commands you use with irritating frequency. ‘Move’ and ‘Let’s go.

You appear to be a mass of contradictions,” Dr Washburn said. “There’s a subsurface violence almost always in control, but very much alive. There’s also a pensiveness that seems painful for you, yet you rarely give vent to the anger that pain must provoke.

Wealth is relative to the amount of time one has to enjoy it. I wouldn’t have five minutes.