Life was to be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

Agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation tunnelers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip readers and disguise artists.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.