For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

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.

Alanna: All I know is that I'm to jump when I'm told and I have no free time.

Love and kindness are the glue that holds us together.

Reading is the spark to imagination. Ignite yours and live forever free.

The Law of Cause and Effect is as active in your life as the Law of Gravity. It teaches us that for every action there is a reaction.

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

I love the winter. Well, I love all the seasons, but the winter is possibly one of the most intense.

Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.

There's always the new wrinkle. One must keep one's eyes always open.

I see myself as the oldest griot tradition of speaking to truth out here. There's a dark side that people don't even know is there.

So much work went into this book [ "The Thorn & The Blossom"] - you can probably tell from looking at the art and overall design.