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

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

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

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.