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

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

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.

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.

Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.

There's such a gulf between yourself and who you were then, but people speak to that other person and it answers; it's like having a stranger as a house guest in your skin.

Defeat is worse than death because you live with defeat.

How can you be of service to something other than your own ego and bank account, in a business that's inherently narcissistic?

To get to this place of a warrior’s courage, we must give up the stories that have ruled our lives and shatter the self-image we created to affirm our story.

I'm not going to freeze my body. One life is enough for me. Some people take this gamble. That someone will be able to bring them back in the future. I'm not going to do it.

Pardon is the virtue of victory.

Some hours weigh against a whole lifetime.

We just can't go and try to turn the clock back, that's not happening anymore. You've got to figure something else out.

a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought