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

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

People are very secretive - secret even from themselves.

On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.

I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.