For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

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

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.