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.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

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

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.