A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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.
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.
You should have died when I killed you.
America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
I've always had difficulties with female characters.
I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.
I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.
Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.
More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.
