I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

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

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