I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].

There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.

Home's where you go when you run out of homes.

Multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations view the exploitation of the world's sick and dying as a sacred duty to their shareholders.

You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.