It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

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

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

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.

It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.