Like every child growing up in America, I read 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' I liked them well enough, but I didn't love them.

Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don't get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.

When I was nine, we moved to Stanford University in San Francisco so that my father could do a Ph.D. I went to Terman Junior High in Palo Alto. It was terrible, because my hormones were all over the place, and I became an ugly adolescent full of rage and loathing.

To create a character who really interests you, try combining aspects of your favourite fictional character with a real person.

It is only in adventure that some people succeed in knowing themselves - in finding themselves.

As a former undercover CIA officer, I've worked with my colleagues in the 114th Congress to approach the growing terrorist threat from a number of angles, including addressing the issue of terrorists' ease of travel, combating terrorist recruitment strategies, and improving our own counterterrorism capabilities.

If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.

We have so much pride in welcoming these passengers onto the plane, and they have so much pride in travel. It's something that I definitely always remember, when I'm playing a scene on the plane, just to imbue everything with that sense of excitement.