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

Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

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

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.