On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

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

Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.