Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

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.

something about giving himself over to a woman was worse than having lunch with the devil...

North Korea has the same ability to launch a nuclear strike against America as I do. It's like walking through a parking lot and getting barked at by a chihuahua locked in a car.

The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.

The more attention Hillary Clinton gives to the country, the less people seem to like her.

And I laugh at myself when I screw things up, which happens all the time.

Each time I think I’ve reached a limit....there is a door....it opens....and the limit is gone.

I do what I do and u do Wat u can do about it

Someone asked Luther, "Do you feel that you've been forgiven?" He answered, "No, but I'm as sure As there's a God in Heaven!"

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

... the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depend.