Our Power Knows No Limits, Yet We

Blackmail Is More Effective Than Bribery.

Look... We're Getting To Be Old Men, And We've Spent Our Lives Looking For The Weaknesses In One Another's Systems. I Can See Through Eastern Values Just As You Can See Through Our Western Ones. Both Of Us, I Am Sure, Have Experienced Ad Nauseam The Technical Satisfactions Of This Wretched War. But Now Your Own Side Is Going To Shoot You. Don't You Think It's Time To Recognise That There Is As Little Worth On Your Side As There Is On Mine?

America Has Entered One Of Its Periods Of Historic Madness, But This Is The Worst I Can Remember.

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.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Was The Work Of A Wayward Imagination Brought To The End Of Its Tether By Political Disgust And Personal Confusion. Fifty Years On, I Don't Associate The Book With Anything That Ever Happened To Me, Save For One Wordless Encounter At London Airport When A Worn-out, Middle-aged Military Kind Of Man In A Stained Raincoat Slammed A Handful Of Mixed Foreign Change On To The Bar And In Gritty Irish Accents Ordered Himself As Much Scotch As It Would Buy. In That Moment, Alec Leamas Was Born. Or So My Memory, Not Always A Reliable Informant, Tells Me.