American novelist (1960- )
It had been so long since we were a family that I had almost forgotten the joy that came with having one. All the small and large moments, many that I had taken for granted while they were occuring, no doubt bolstered by the certainty that there would be many more. Yet such endearing and memorable engagements in life are promised to no one. They come and go and one has to be aware that there is no assurance they will ever come again.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Finisher
It had always bothered Tom that women thought they could win an argument with a man simply by appealing to his baser instincts, by holding out the mere possibility of award-winning carnal knowledge. It was the gender equivalent of a preemptive nuclear strike. He thought it unfair and, quite frankly, disrespectful of the entire male population.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to get it right.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power
It would actually constitute more than a miracle, he realized. It would take divine intervention plus luck, plus some unknown element of cosmic wizardry.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Whole Truth
I remember the Sherlock Holmes stories where he and Watson would go to the countryside. Watson would see the beautiful cottages and Holmes would see a harbinger of crime. He went on to say that in London there are at least many police officers that would be nearby compared to the countryside where there are miles and miles from local law enforcement. If there is a police force it is very small which allows people to get away with a lot.
DAVID BALDACCI
interview, Crime Spree Magazine, November 14, 2017
As a lawyer, I was paid to write persuasively. I was paid to take the same set of facts the other side had and make you believe that my version of it was true, while the other side was doing the exact same thing.
DAVID BALDACCI
interview, The Strand
Love is like a good piece of wood: It just gets stronger and stronger as the years go by.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
She had spent considerable time writing the letter. The younger generation, with all of its tweets and Facebook and cryptic texts and emails where no actual language or grammar were involved, would never have understood taking the time.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Forgotten
You know what kind of person it takes to run for President? Not normal. They could start out okay, but by the time they reach that level they've sold their soul to the devil so many times and stomped the guts out of enough people that they are definitely not like you and me, not even close.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power
Arrogant people habitually overestimated their own abilities and underestimated everyone else's.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power
Five hundred and thirty-five members of Congress plied their trade near here in various buildings named after long-dead politicians. They, in turn, were surrounded by an army of lobbyists flush with cash who worked relentlessly to convince the elected officials of the unassailable righteousness of their causes. Such was democracy.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Innocent
Woe be to the wug who forgets that destroying one part of a thing does not equal victory.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Finisher
The first person to see the video, a computer programmer in Houston, was stunned. He e-mailed the file to a list of twenty friends on his share list. The next person to view it seconds later lived in France and suffered from insomnia. In tears, she sent it to fifty friends. The third viewer was from South Africa and was so incensed at what he'd seen that he phoned the BBC and then did an e-mail blast to eight hundred of his "closest" mates on the Web. A teenage girl in Norway watched the video in horror and then forwarded it to every person she knew. The next thousand people to view it lived in nineteen different countries and shared it with thirty friends each, and they with dozens each. What had started as a digital raindrop in the Internet ocean quickly exploded int a pixel-and-byte tsunami the size of a continent.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Whole Truth
Very few people knew I was writing during those years: my mom and dad, my brother and sister, my wife. That was it. Not even my in-laws knew. It was a very personal thing for me I was pursuing. My wife obviously was very instrumental. We had a family, and she took on more of the labor of that, allowing me to write at night, early in the morning, and on the weekends. My mom and dad obviously instilled the love of reading in all three of us siblings; we went to the library every weekend and checked out lots of books. But for my love of books, I wouldn’t have ended up being a writer. But I could open a book and explore different parts of the world without ever leaving the city where I grew up. It was a fascinating thing, and I became mesmerized by the power of language. That’s really what started it for me.
DAVID BALDACCI
interview, The Strand
It's not getting from A to B. It's not the beginning or the destination that counts. It's the ride in between.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
After all, there were bills to pay, shopping to do, kids to raise, and sports to watch, so who had time for anything else?
DAVID BALDACCI
The Whole Truth
It’s a crazy kind of schedule but five or six years ago, I had an idea for a book and wrote it rather quickly. All of a sudden I found that two books a year, spring and fall, was something I could reasonably do. I’m always chasing the next story.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Telegraph, November 16, 2015
It's my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they're going. For them it's the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop this train makes, a little bit of America, a little bit of your country, gets on and says hello.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Christmas Train
People like to talk about other people's misery; it makes them feel their own life is somehow better when it usually isn't.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power
Like a spreading pandemic, the video ignited a maelstrom worldwide. From blog to blog, chat room to chat room, e-mail to e-mail, the story passed. With each retelling it grew in proportion until the globe was in apparent jeopardy of being overrun at any moment by crazy, bloodthirsty Russians. Within three days after Konstantin's sad proclamation, the world rang with his name. Soon half the earth's population, including many who had no idea who the U.S. president or the pope was, knew all about the dead Russian.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Whole Truth