But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

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

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

Blackmail is more effective than bribery.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

No matter what we are or who created us, we’re all energy. And energy that becomes bound together by love cannot be torn apart. Not by time. Not by grief and pain. Not even the veil of death.

Ideas are a capital that bears interest only in the hands of talent.

If the physical perfection of childhood could last, what a possesssion it would be for humanity!

Forever - is composed of Nows - 'Tis not a different time... Let Months dissolve in further Months - And Years - exhale in Years.

Some boys are particular about how they look. I'm not.

My guilty pleasure is reality TV, as I am really nosey.

Perl was designed to work more like a natural language. It's a little more complicated but there are more shortcuts, and once you learned the language, it's more expressive.

I find it so much easier to be creatively free at night. Daytime is for sleeping. Nighttime is the best time for making art. The later at night it gets the further into another world you go.

There are twenty-four characters in this book named Max. Let there be an end to this silly business of authors never giving their own names to characters in their novels. False modesty, faugh!

It's one thing to reject the idea that it's a man's job to bring home all the bacon; it's another the 500th time your wife reaches for the check at dinner.