A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

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

All power corrupts but some must govern.

There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.

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

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.