You can't ever win the war on crime, or the war on terror. You can't repeal human nature.

It is perseverance, and not genius that takes a man to the top. Rome is full of unrecognized geniuses. Only perseverance enables you to move forward in the world.

One cannot see any world leader who has got a grip on the financial markets these days. They're too big, too fast. I think that's quite scary.

You find out what you think by talking to yourself.

That young man seeks opportunities to test his principles as readily as a drunk picks fights in a bar.

By dawn he had surrendered, gratefully, to the old inertia, the product of always seeing both sides of every question.

I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.