“I love Jet Li, but he looks very Chinese, and his English is Chinese-accented. H…” — Barry Eisler

The job of the screenplay is to identify and extract the essence of the story from the novel and reconfigure it for the screen, maintaining its essence in a different vehicle.

The fundamental difficulty that most novelists face when they are trying to adapt their own book into a screenplay is realizing that a screenplay is a completely different way of storytelling, and it has limitations.

The post office actually achieves its mission. I wish we could say the same of the CIA.

The two most important things to do for self-defense are not to take a martial arts class or get a gun, but to think like the opposition and know where you're most at risk.