A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.

I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.

No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.

Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

You should have died when I killed you.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.