DOUGLAS BRUNT

The job for cable is to give the news and then also give the 'so what.'

'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street.

If there is going to be any meaningful sales, it's going to be through word of mouth and people recommending it to their book club and then a thousand more book clubs do it, and then you get into real sales numbers.

New York can get on top of you if you don't have much money, but if you have money, it's kind of a playground.

New York is big, fast, energetic, and has the most and best of everything. While it can push the senses, it's the most convenient place to live. It's much easier for a ninety year old to live in New York City than in the suburbs. NYC is the best mass assisted-living facility on the planet.

Wall Street has played a role in everyone's life, and it has been vilified by everyone, but I think that the average trader didn't have a sense of what was coming. The culture is so vacuous, it's possible to come to it straight out of college and never have a real adult life, even if you have the wife and kids.

A theme I'm obsessed with is the tension between human nature and the frameworks designed to curb the worst and promote the best of it.

Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful.

I've thought about bringing my children to retrace my own steps of the morning of September 11, 2001, but they're too young for that. Maybe when they're twenty. Maybe by then, even though it's been only a short subway ride away for years now, I'll have the nerve to see the 9-11 memorial for the first time.

A comparison of the average professional baseball salary to the national average salary over the last one hundred years shows that for the first fifty years, 1920-1970, baseball players held a steady multiple of about 3.4 times the national average income.

I'm really troubled by the prevalence of single-sport specializations. I want my kids to do as many things for as long as they can. Specialization is a natural thing that should come later - it shouldn't come for 8-year-olds.

Your spouse, a sibling, a friend need to read your drafts. They have to be people unafraid to tell you what sucks. For early feedback, that's more important than professional editorial skill. Most people know what sucks.

In my first book, 'Ghosts Of Manhattan,' the setting was Wall Street, and I explored the predictable nature of a bond trader inside the compensation scheme at Bear Stearns and the government regulations of Wall Street. That was about money.

It's much easier to get disgusted when you've already banked 20 million bucks.

Style matters, but the real force of writing is ideas, not style.

The main influence on voters should be a series of robust debates among the candidates. It's a free country, so this is a tough problem to solve, but I'd love to see an election season with zero political ads, and all voters had to decide based on watching four national debates over the two months leading to election day.

The important thing is to write when your brain is at its best. Work edits or do outside reading with the rest of the day.

I've been pretty damn happy since 2001. More apparent danger than real danger for me, and even the apparent danger hasn't kept me from feeling warm, safe and loved. I've found love and a partner to raise three children that I'm glad to have brought into this beautiful world.

My parents had the plan for my life from the moment my mother tested positive with me. Looking back now, I'd say the hard turn for me was when I left school after the eighth grade to play tennis full time and study some with a travelling tutor.

There used to be a few 'Great Santinis', but now there's many 'Great Santinis'.

I prefer a change of surroundings anyway, and I like to be around some energy and white noise, so I usually go to a Barnes & Noble cafe or to the library on 5th and 42nd. In the afternoons, I do research, reading, editing, and play with the kids.

I like to write in the mornings, so I try to protect 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. for me. I can drop our older two kids at school then write for a few hours.

D.C. is a small town with some big-town features.

Don't write more than 3 hours at a time. I write three hours in the morning, 9 A.M. - 12 P.M. Other people are best late at night.

Dad was a retired hedge fund manager who made enough millions to retire and focus on my game. Before that, he was on the 1984 U.S. Olympic swimming team. No medals. He was accustomed to winning at everything, but no medals in 1984.