Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

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.

What had she have to wish for? Nothing but to grow more worthy of him whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own.

Books are just old friends waiting to be discovered.

It took something massive to shatter a Mimic endo-skeleton in one hit. That it could kill me in the process was beside the point.

Let me say the good are often punished unfairly.

You can tell a man's taste in literature by his judgment in knowing what not to read.

It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.

Lesson #456 of high school life: Never, EVER trust an alarm clock.

I have gone wooing to several gentlemen, but have not succeeded with any of them.

Your conscience is no defense against you sins; however, it can unfortunately deny you the pleasure of enjoying them.