I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

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

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.

I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.