Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.

If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.

For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

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.

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.