Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.

On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.