I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.

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.

...there are no new themes for a writer, only new ways of setting down old themes, new eyes to wander among old rocks.

One shouldn't forget his goal ever, whether he has to lose his personality on way to get it. Because to recognize aim and to achieve it, is the real life.

machine. Unexpectedly, I'd invented a time

One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.

Diets, like clothes, should be tailored to you.

Nought venture, nought have. [Nothing ventured, nothing gained.]

Things dribbled in in dribs and drabs through my 20s. But it was a struggle.

Love, a pleasant folly; ambition, a serious stupidity.

There are other places, surely, for other people, but for me there is one place, Ann 
Arbor, for there it was I discovered what lifes bright possibilities were.

A vote for Japan is a vote for the future of rugby. We will do our best to make rugby a global sport.