I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.

The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.

Home's where you go when you run out of homes.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

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

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.