I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.

I think that most of my books are part of some process of self-education, often about the places I go to. Most of all, they are about the peculiar tension between institutional loyalty and loyalty to oneself; the mystery of patriotism, for a Brit of my age and generation, where it runs, how it should be defined, what it's worth and what a corrupting force it can be when misapplied. All that stuff is just in me and it comes out in the characters. I don't mean to preach, but I know I do, and I'm a very flawed person. It's quite ridiculous.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

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