“Only in the stillness of thought can decisions be properly made.”

“I never used an outline until I started "The Bourne Legacy" project for which I was required to write an outline. To be honest, I thought I'd hate the idea, assuming that if I'd thought of all the ideas at the outset I'd have to incentive to actually write the book, because for me part of the joy of writing are the surprises you come upon as the book takes shape. But something curious and exciting happened. As I wrote the outline, some sections would be very detailed, others quite sketchy, so that whole portions of the book would be covered by one line, such as "Bourne is chased by Khan through Budapest," which when I wrote the novel turned out to be 40-50 pages! Now I'll never write a novel without first doing an outline. Looking back on it, I used to get bogged down in extraneous characters and situations, especially during the first 100 pages (which I find the most difficult to write) that I would later have to scrap, wasting time and energy, and frustrating me. Now that never happens.”

“In Morocco, he was back in his element, a shark moving through deep and dangerous waters. But for thousands of years sharks have been bred to survive dark and dangerous waters. So too, Leonid Arkadin.”

“We're brought up with a kind of romanticism that's so false it leads us astray. Falling in love and marriage is forever. The movies, then TV told us that, even—especially—the commercials.”

“Perhaps it's true you can't go back in time, but you can return to the scene of a love, of a crime, of happiness, and of a fateful decision; the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal.”

“If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.”

“With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”