A committee is an animal with four back legs.

Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.

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

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another.

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.

In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.