Bankrate: You did publish, however, and at a relatively young age. But you weren't living in squalor in Greenwich Village writing the Great American Novel.

Patterson: No. I didn't have any money, but I was working. It always seemed to me presumptuous that I could make a living writing. And also, I had read "Ulysses" three or four times, and in reading it, I just said, I can't do anything like that. It didn't interest me to try to write a real serious novel, nor was I interested in writing for the kind of people who will tout that kind of book as terrific. I just didn't feel like writing for that audience.

Bankrate: Once you published, were you tempted to quit your job and write full time?

Patterson: No. I went to Vanderbilt, I was in a doctoral program in English, and it was also during Vietnam, and at a certain point I got into the (draft) lottery and I just said this is a good time to get out of the graduate school thing. What concerned me about graduate school was if I continued to do that and taught, I would wind up disliking something that I had come to love. That fear of turning myself off to writing and reading kept me in advertising for a while.

Bankrate: Your best-seller career didn't really happen until the late 1980s, right?

Patterson: In terms of hits, I think it was 1992 or 1993. Along the way, I was with Jane, who I loved very much, who developed a brain tumor, and that was two and a half years where I didn't write at all. The reason I got out of advertising wasn't to write, even at the point that I did get out. It occurred to me that the best moments I ever spent in my life were with this woman who had died, and I was spending no time looking for somebody, between doing the advertising and writing books on the side. That was my whole life. And I said, this is stupid, you should try to find somebody. So I went out and for the next couple of years, I looked for somebody and I wound up marrying Sue and we have an 8-year-old now, Jack. That was a good choice. I had actually hired Sue 20-some years earlier at J. Walter Thompson, she got married, and a little later on, back around 1997, we dated. Actually, when Jane died, I was just a writer at Thompson and I just threw myself into advertising because I didn't want to have a free second. Then I rose very, very quickly and became chairman in about three or four years. I just didn't want to have any time to myself.

Bankrate: Did you have the personality to run the show?

Patterson: No, I don't have the personality for business. What I have -- and this is the one gift that I have -- is a tremendous gut for what is going to move people. In advertising, I could just look at something and go, "That one, not that one." The same in the book world, and hopefully, eventually, in the movie world. I look at the trailer for "Wedding Crashers" and go, "Hit." I look at the trailer for "Monster in Law" and go, "Hit." Some people seem to have it and some people don't, but I've had enough experience with it now to know that it actually is relatively accurate.