Spy Novels Quotes & Sayings

Mind Your Language in the Presence of Patriachs

Q. When is rape not rape?
A. When it is your father or stepfather. — S. Caroline Taylor

They said this is Vanity Fair, and I said, Oh, I already take the magazine. They said Annie Leibovitz wants to take your picture and I thought, How nice! — Shirley Knight

Frightened people live in their own special hell. You could say they make it themselves, but they can't help it. It's the way they're built. They deserve sympathy and compassion. — Stephen King

If you have read many adventure novels, you'll know that spies spend about half of their time in the sewers. They run along sewer tunnels, shooting. They find secret hideaways in sewers. They take weird funeral barges through sewers, poled along by old men in hoods. In fact, if a spy's kid wants to get a message to their mom or dad, the easiest way to do it is just to flush it down the toilet. — M T Anderson

Never patronize your readers. That means don't talk down to them. — Tom Greer

If these hands, used to fighting, would be acceptable to His Holiness, we most thankfully dedicate them to the service of him who deserves so well of the Church and of the fatherland. — Giuseppe Garibaldi

After ten years of word processing, I can't even do hand writing anymore. — Douglas Adams

I went to graduate school at Harvard for one year I worked in the state legislature in Sacramento for one year. I taught school in Compton for two years. — Harry Shearer

My dad liked more macho adventure books like Shogun or spy novels. My mother reads murder mysteries. In fact, so does her mother, my grandma. That's where I trace the familial line of murder mystery obsession. — Christopher Bollen

Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best. — Alan Furst

Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society. — John Adams

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that? — Alan Furst

You could say that all novels are spy novels and all novelists are spy masters. — Ian McEwan

In almost every thriller, a point is reached when someone, usually calling from a phone booth, telephones with a vital piece of information, which he cannot divulge by phone. By the time the hero arrives at the place where they had arranged to meet, the caller is dead, or too near death to tell. There is never an explanation for the reluctance of the caller to impart his message in the first place. Certainly, the convention existed well before the age of the tape recorder and the wiretap. Not on the phone, in a spy or mystery story, has always been, in and of itself, sufficient to hold up the resolution of the case for a long, long time. — Renata Adler

First, when a strategic inflection point sweeps through the industry, the more successful a participant was in the old industry structure, the more threatened it is by change and the more reluctant it is to adapt to it. Second, whereas the cost to enter a given industry in the face of well-entrenched participants can be very high, when the structure breaks, the cost to enter may become trivially small, giving rise to Compaqs, Dells and Novells, each of which emerged from practically nothing to become major corporations. What's common among these companies is that they all instinctively followed the rules for success in a horizontal industry. — Andrew S. Grove

Of John Le Carre's books, I've only read 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,' and I haven't read anything by Graham Greene, but I've heard a great deal about how 'Your Republic Is Calling You' reminded English readers of those two writers. I don't really have any particular interest in Cold War spy novels. — Kim Young-ha

When people find out that I've written 208 novels, they ask, 'How did you think of all that?' Well, I answer, 'How do you not think of it?' I see a gum wrapper on the ground, and I think, 'Oh, a Russian spy probably dropped that.' I just think like that, and those thoughts go through my mind constantly. — Gilbert Morris

Just call me a family man and an actor who digs his whole scene, side interests and all. Just say I feel mighty good at the ripe old age of 27. — Bobby Darin

In 1996, when my first novel, 'Masquerade,' was published, I knew international thrillers - or spy novels, if you prefer - had been the domain of male authors for decades. — Gayle Lynds

Public truth telling is a form of recovery, especially when combined with social action. Sharing traumatic experiences with others enables victims to reconstruct repressed memory, mourn loss, and master helplessness, which is trauma's essential insult. And, by facilitating reconnection to ordinary life, the public testimony helps survivors restore basic trust in a just world and overcome feelings of isolation. But the talking cure is predicated on the existence of a community willing to bear witness. 'Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships,' write Judith Herman. 'It cannot occur in isolation. — Lawrence N. Powell