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

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

When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.

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