Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

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

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

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

In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.

There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.