The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.

Life is about learning; when you stop learning, you die.

Back in pre-Revolutionary America cruel and unusual punishment meant the rack and burning at the stake... in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.

The human condition today is better than it's ever been, and technology is one of the reasons for that.

Success will ruin your life.

Civilians listened to officers, which said a lot about the intelligence of civilians.

Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.