How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].