Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

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

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

People are very secretive - secret even from themselves.

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