I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

Let's die of it before we're too old.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].