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

He has the gift of quiet.

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

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.

The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.

Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.