Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.

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.

When one heart feels the other and in harmony, love is there.

What's more, he was going to have a full American breakfast with bacon and eggs, none of this continental bullshit.

This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic.

Nothing has brought me more love, joy and peace than being a good husband and good daddy.

Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.

Building a good, stable, and productive China-U.S. relationship is in our mutual interest of our two countries and our two peoples, and also contributes to peace and development.

What I have found is that real friends stand by you.

Look for the beauty in things.

In writing I found a way to make silence and to be silent. The short story has a lot more silence than the novel and that is its success.

My work is in itself a ghost of my vision.