Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.

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

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge

For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.