“There is no greater unknown than the sea and no greater mystery than a lost ship.”
― Clive Cussler
“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
“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
“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
“I collect vintage cars, so you always find them in my books.”
― Clive Cussler
“I don’t like interior decorating. It looks gorgeous, but it doesn’t have that lived-in look.”
― Clive Cussler
“I almost write to formula, because there’s a historical beginning, then the plots get convoluted.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m not a great writer of literature. I’m an entertainer.”
― Clive Cussler
“The fascination for me is searching the unknown for a mystery.”
― Clive Cussler
“Some men play golf. I’ve got this crazy thing about maintaining our nation’s maritime heritage.”
― Clive Cussler
“If you are a writer, Saturday and Sunday don’t mean anything.”
― Clive Cussler
“The truth is ships and aircraft have been vanishing with tragic regularity in every part of the world since they were invented.”
― Clive Cussler
“I like snappy dialogue and short descriptions and lots of action.”
― Clive Cussler
“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
“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
“My friends joke that I raised the Titanic and never left the Rockies.”
― Clive Cussler
“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
“It’s a quirk of mine; I love neat garages.”
― Clive Cussler
“Shipwrecks are incredible mysteries.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’d give my left arm for the Merrimack.”
― Clive Cussler
“A lot of people don’t understand why I’m not out diving for treasure.”
― Clive Cussler
“There’s a little bit of Pitt in everybody.”
― Clive Cussler
“They botched ‘Raise the Titanic’ so badly that I waited 20 years to do it again.”
― Clive Cussler
“Matthew’s all right. Originally, I wanted Errol Flynn, but McConaughey should be good as Dirk Pitt.”
― Clive Cussler
“There’s no literary merit in my books.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m writing for entertainment. I like people to reach the end and feel they got their money’s worth.”
― Clive Cussler
“I was the kid who stared out the window. I fantasized myself on the deck of pirate ships – Cussler at the bridge.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m considered the ‘old daddy of adventure.’”
― Clive Cussler
“They screwed up ‘Raise the Titanic!’ so badly, I stay away from Hollywood. I won’t cheat my readers with another piece of crap.”
― Clive Cussler
“Nobody gives a damn about the Merrimac. You know how it is. Winners write the history books.”
― Clive Cussler
“If it ain’t fun, it ain’t worth doing.”
― Clive Cussler
“My forte is the plotting. You sit down, and you work out a plot.”
― Clive Cussler
“When I type ‘The End,’ it’s like being paroled from prison.”
― Clive Cussler
“I had horrible experiences in Hollywood.”
― Clive Cussler
“After the Dirk Pitt books became best-sellers, I could afford to buy the more exotic examples of classic autos.”
― Clive Cussler
“I purchased a 1955 Rolls-Royce that my wife liked because it was new the year we were married. Then came a 1926 Hispano-Suiza Cabriolet that I bought at my first classic car auction after I had three martinis. As more cars were added, I had to buy a warehouse.”
― Clive Cussler
“If ever a car was created by designers with dreams of grandeur, it had to be the 1958 Buick Limited: the heftiest, highest-priced and most opulent monster ever to hit the street in the ’50s.”
― Clive Cussler
“I never had a highfalutin’ view of what I write.”
― Clive Cussler
“It’s a job. I entertain my readers. I get up in the morning, and I start typing.”
― Clive Cussler
“I want it to be easy to read. I’m not writing exotic literature.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m a storyteller.”
― Clive Cussler
“My books are easy to read. No folderol.”
― Clive Cussler
“Maybe some day they’ll find me behind the computer, just bones and cobwebs.”
― Clive Cussler
“When I started writing, I just hoped for a nice little paperback series.”
― Clive Cussler
“My job is to entertain the readers in such a manner that, when they reach the end of the book, they feel like they’ve gotten their money’s worth.”
― Clive Cussler
“I can’t retire. My readers won’t let me.”
― Clive Cussler
“I didn’t have the great American novel burning inside me, but I felt I could try my hand at popular fiction.”
― Clive Cussler
“I don’t think of myself as a writer.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m not working on the Great American Novel. All I am doing, I hope, is entertaining readers.”
― Clive Cussler
“After putting the kids to bed, I would think about what I wanted to write.”
― Clive Cussler
“Either you’ve got the bug, or you haven’t. There are many things I’d rather be doing than writing a book.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m not a dedicated writer in the sense of Stephen King.”
― Clive Cussler
“Some people are drawn to a van Gogh or a Rembrandt. Some are attracted to exotic guns. Coins. Stamps. I am attracted to cars.”
― Clive Cussler
“The culinary scene in Phoenix is incredible.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’ve always liked Mexican food.”
― Clive Cussler
“NUMA is basically trying to preserve our maritime heritage by finding lost shipwrecks of historical significance before they are gone.”
― Clive Cussler
“I honestly thought I probably did sell 100 million books. That doesn’t seem out of the ordinary to me.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’m always interested in something that’s missing.”
― Clive Cussler
“I was always a history buff.”
― Clive Cussler
“I can appreciate other writers’ works.”
― Clive Cussler
“I have a large collection of town cars because when I was just a snipe in the gutter, growing up in Los Angeles, a town car drove by. I remember running in the house to get my mother so she could see it. It was utterly magnificent.”
― Clive Cussler
“I was driving by an auto auction one day, and they were auctioning off a beautiful Hispano-Suiza. I started bidding even though I hadn’t even signed up with the officials. The last bid was $50,000, and it was mine. And I thought, ‘My God, what have I done? I’ve never spent more than $500 in my life.’ That was the first one.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’d heard about a shipwreck that was never found – John Paul Jones’ Bonhomme Richard. So I thought, ‘Well, I’ll go look for it.’”
― Clive Cussler
“When we find a ship, we turn it over to the state or federal government. It’s purely historical. I’ve never made a dime on any of it.”
― Clive Cussler
“If you have some natural talent and really want to write, you should read the books of someone who’s very successful in your genre. You don’t want to plagiarize, but you want to learn from that author.”
― Clive Cussler
“I love doing the research for the novels. For me, the writing is hard work.”
― Clive Cussler
“I get up in the morning, get to the office, and write until about six o’clock in the evening.”
― Clive Cussler
“My son’s name is Dirk – I named Dirk Pitt after him when he was about three years old.”
― Clive Cussler
“I suppose, because I’ve been able to make a very good living writing books, that going out and finding another million dollars under the sea is not the fascination. The fascination is in finding the ship.”
― Clive Cussler
“I’ve always been a Civil War buff. In fact, the ships that always fascinated me the most were the ironclads, because they were the start of an era.”
― Clive Cussler
“If I were to say I’m looking for treasure, people would come up with the money. When I say I’m looking for a historic wreck, they’re not interested.”
― Clive Cussler
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