I'm a traitor, but I don't consider myself a traitor.

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

The betrayal of trust carries a heavy taboo.

The use of the polygraph has done little more than create confusion, ambiguity and mistakes.

The U.S. is, so far as I know, the only nation which places such extensive reliance on the polygraph. It has gotten us into a lot of trouble.

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

The FBI, to its credit in a self-serving sort of way, rejects the routine use of the polygraph on its own people.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product.

I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.

Tim Stoutheart was afraid, too, ” I said. “But he went on. I expect you to do the same.

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides.

I am pro-life, I believe in exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. That's my position, take it or leave it.

Usually if a scene's really hard to write, I just don't write it. Nothing's coming to mind.

There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly.

And so I tell you this: be now and forever centered upon your Self. Look to see what you are being, doing, and having in any given moment, not what's going on with another.

But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die. You've gotta get up and try, try, try.

I was very precocious when I was young. I went to college at 16, and I graduated at 20. I wanted to be a writer, but I was more interested in experience than in applying myself intellectually.

Prophesying is lying professionally.