I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.

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 must seek together to address the good aspirations of people everywhere, for we are bound together through great commonality.

If it is true, as God says, that we are as we think, we risk becoming what we most fear if our fear is stronger than our love.

Love is your religion

You are not a real thinker if your thoughts haven't landed you in trouble yet

You must have a dragon hidden inside you. When you need, you let the dragon out.

The invocation of social necessity should alert us. It contains the seeds for Marx's critique of political economy as well as for his dissection of capitalism.

It is on our failures that we base a new and different and better success.

If you learn indoor techniques, you will think narrowly and forget the true Way. Thus you will have difficulty in actual encounters.

The wonderful thing about books is you never run out of them, you can just keep going. So I'm always finding new writers, or old writers that I just happen not to have read.

Darwinism did not strip meaning from the world but intensified it, 'by identifying it in as many aspects of life as possible'.