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

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

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

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.