The mystery, of course, the intrigue and the history. I'm a history nut. I never say anything, but I got a Ph.D. in maritime history, but it's the challenge, I think. Because if you are successful, it's a great feeling of achievement. In my case, if it's lost, I'll look for it.

Clive Cussler

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.

Clive Cussler

luck inspirational history

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.

Clive Cussler

block book moving

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.

Clive Cussler

plot-lines writing sometimes

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.

Clive Cussler

research want firsts

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

Clive Cussler

southern coffee home

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?

Clive Cussler

girl islands beautiful

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

Clive Cussler

raised my-friends jokes

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.

Clive Cussler

oregon brain children

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.

Clive Cussler

hero writing fun

There is no greater unknown than the sea and no greater mystery than a lost ship.

Clive Cussler

ship mystery sea lost

I collect vintage cars, so you always find them in my books.

Clive Cussler

find you always vintage

I was born about 80 years too late. If you were a kid in 1910, the Fourth of July was a big deal. You knew all about the Revolution, and you still had Civil War veterans.

Clive Cussler

you born revolution war

If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don't mean anything.

Clive Cussler

you saturday sunday mean

I almost write to formula, because there's a historical beginning, then the plots get convoluted.

Clive Cussler

write beginning because historical

I don't like interior decorating. It looks gorgeous, but it doesn't have that lived-in look.

Clive Cussler

interior like look looks

People have said I belong in a rubber room because I look for wrecks, and when I find them, I just do a survey. I don't look for treasure or artifacts.

Clive Cussler

find look treasure people

I am not like Stephen King, who writes one book, then writes another. I finish a book and go off and... look for wrecks. Then, six months later, I might start another book.

Clive Cussler

king i-am look book

Some men play golf. I've got this crazy thing about maintaining our nation's maritime heritage.

Clive Cussler

nation crazy golf men

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.

Clive Cussler

nobody alone day night

When I was in the military, I socked away $100 every month. When I was discharged in 1954, I got home at 5 A.M. By 10 A.M., I was pulling out of a foreign car dealership in Pasadena in a new Jaguar XK120.

Clive Cussler

new car military home