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

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

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

I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].

...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.