Clive Cussler Quotations

My friends joke that I raised the Titanic and never left the Rockies.

When I first started writing, I was in advertising at the time, I was doing most of my writing on weekends. I had studied most of the other series heroes and I figured it would be fun for mine to be different and put him in and around water. So I dreamed up Dirk Pitt.

She had the kids during the day and I would have them at night. That way they were never alone. I would put the kids to bed, and then I had nothing to do and nobody to talk to, so I would write.

I feel pretty good. Nobody expected it to do that well right out of the gate.

To create something you want to sell, you first study and research the market, then you develop the product to the best of your ability.

She was a Privately funded spy ship owned by the corporation and headed by Juan Cabtillo. The Oregon was his brain child and his one true love.

I must say one thing about southern down-home brewed coffee with chicory. If you have worms, you'll never have them again.

Giordino...simply sighed in resignation. "Who else," he asked no one in particular, "but Dirk Pitt could tramp off into a blizzard on an uninhabited backwater island in the Antarctic and discover a beautiful girl?

Sometimes my plot lines are so convoluted, I get calls from friends at 3 am saying; you SOB, you'll never pull this one off.

I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away.

To those of you who seek lost objects of history, I wish you the best of luck. They're out there, and they're whispering.

Ever since Pitt was wearing one, collectors were dumbfounded; they were saying that it wasn't an expensive watch, what's all the fuss about. I understand the prices have been driven up since then; people are even paying $1000 for them. I've met people that tell me that they spent two years looking for one.

As for the DOXA watch, when I was beginning my second book, I was the creative director for a big ad agency in L.A. My wife said jokingly, why don 't you apply for this job? It was a $400/month job as a clerk in a Dive shop, perfect for writing underwater books.

It's always the thrill of the unknown. Everybody dives in the Grand Cayman or Bermuda. I don't dive in those places anymore, after 50 years the thrill just isn't there. I always tell everybody, go where nobody goes! Go up into Canada or Alaska, sure it's cold water, but you'll be seeing things nobody has seen before!

It will be a thrilling moment, ... It's going to be a wonder.

Not much to comment on, because they made a botch of Raise the Titanic 20 years ago. I wouldn't sell to Hollywood.

I guess the books are kind of like the old Saturday afternoon matinee serials. Most of them were westerns in those days. Where the hero is going off the cliff in a car filled with dynamite and that's were it would end, until you came back the following Saturday to find out what happened.

I applied for the job. They had three stores and they were shocked! They said that I was a little over qualified, but they hired me anyway.