We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

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

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.