When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

Love means having something to betray.

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.

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

All power corrupts but some must govern.