Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.

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.

There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

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