I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

He has the gift of quiet.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

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

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.