Quotes from Charles McCarry

Bülow drew danger to himself by the excessive use of technique; he behaved like a spy because he enjoyed the trappings of conspiracy. He had been making the same furtive mistakes for such a long time that he believed they had preserved his life. No one else doubted that sooner or later they would kill him.

you'd better get rid of the idea that either one of us, or anyone else in this day and age, can appeal to the general interest, to patriotism or common sense, and achieve a result that's in the best interests of the country.

All but a few of those messages of concern to the Senate and much of the commentary in the news media had come from people who held radical beliefs with evangelical passion and would spring ferociously to their defense at the slightest sign that they were being questioned. Hammett knew their minds: Correctness was virtue; belief was personal validity; doctrine was truth. All else was evil.

Like all good intelligence officers, Webster knew how to form friendships and use the friends he made. No human action surprised him or touched his emotions.

Eight years before, after a tumultuous election campaign, Mallory had defeated an inept and unpopular but liberal President by tactics that people like the dean regarded as kicking a man when he was down: he had pointedly ignored an appalling personal scandal that swirled round the incumbent and dwelled caustically on the man's virtually unbroken string of disastrous policy mistakes.

This did not mean that he had not been active in his own cause. On the contrary, he had been on the telephone all night, every night, feeding his advocates facts and phrases, suggesting sources of support and information, organizing telephone and mail campaigns, and above all guiding and nurturing journalists by reminding them, by tone of voice and vocabulary—though never in so many words—that he was the enemy of their enemies.

Nothing makes a man sound crazier than to describe what crazy people are trying to do to him.

What," asked Julian without preamble, "did Trelawny snatch from the funeral pyre at Viareggio?" The go-between replied, "Shelley's heart.

Yes," Christopher said. " 'He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire

As of ten minutes ago, when he was sworn in by Albert Tyler in the President's Room with the leadership of both houses of Congress as witnesses, that's what he is." Busby was staggered by the audacity of this maneuver by the Old Guard. "But how could something like this happen just like that, with no warning, out of the blue?" "Because we have a Constitution which delivers us from evil

Anything that's secret, clandestine, loaded with such a supercargo of speculation, misinformation, disinformation and, for that matter, accurate revelations, creates an appetite.

I've consciously tried not to romanticize anything, especially not intelligence work. I've always said that I've been writing a series of episodic, naturalistic novels. The people just happen to be spies, politicians, civil servants.

China, hidden and mysterious, has always interested me.

If I were to give you a list of names of the people, world political figures, who have been assisted by the CIA, and even assisted to office around the world, you'd be astonished and probably wouldn't believe it. But it's very long, and the names are very distinguished.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.

When it comes to the assignment of blame, the CIA has by and large been a luckless organization.