Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

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.

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

For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.

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.

Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.