Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

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.

We speak not only to tell other people what we think, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.

For me, being tall was very positive because I thought my mom was the most beautiful person ever.

If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive.

The frequent repetition of miracles serves to provoke, where it does not subdue, the reason of mankind.

The only thing that lives beyond the grave is the wake you have created by the way you have lived your life; the goals you have set; the distance away from the normal you dared to tread.

Dill if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged.

The problem we have in America is the systematic erosion of our religious values in an attempt by certain liberal groups to expunge our Christian heritage from the public square.

Sometimes I have the urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

The eye of prudence may never shut.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.