The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.