Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

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.

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.

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

I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.