I'd rather talk to people who do things than complain about other people who do things. I say they're idiots.

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.

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

Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.

There is an old saying: In history nothing is true but the names and dates. In fiction everything is true but the names and dates. The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

The difference between me and you is that I do good fiction.