In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.

We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another.

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

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

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

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