I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

All men are born free: just not for long.

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.