Spy Thriller Quotes & Sayings

Nobody seems to remember you from any of your employers."
"I guess I'm not very memorable — Kenneth Eade

The two smallest boys were cut down first, bodies bounding in different directions as they were shot from opposite sides of the field, like pinballs caught in a tight corner. — Cole Alpaugh

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

Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice. — Michael Dirda

For a month already I was carrying on my affair with him, the whole month behind the closed doors of his office with hot wet kisses, with top secret papers scattered on the floor thrown off the table in haste, Georg rolling his eyes at yet another cancelled meeting and the order not to disturb the Chief of the RSHA, winks and hidden smiles through the half opened door, and the two of us smelling of each other's perfume. And with every day I was sinking deeper and deeper in that swamp, and didn't even try to grab the ground that was right next to me. I was disgusted with myself like an alcoholic who wakes up in a pile of dirt, but crawls right back to the pub to fill himself again with the poisonous liquor slowly killing him with every new sip. — Ellie Midwood

He offered me a ride up from the abyss and I took it. But a ride with the devil is never free. And accepting that ride can only lead to hell. — S.D. Skye

'Homeland' is a thriller with a lot of cloak and dagger spy stuff, which is one of the things that makes it so much fun. — Adam Rayner

Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same party with different faces and that was why, no matter how many promises each leader made, significant change rarely transpired. — James Morcan

Home was wherever they were together, and it felt good. — Kenneth Eade

I don't like killing, but I'm good at it. Murder isn't so bad from a distance, just shapes popping up in my scope. Close-up work though - a garrotte around a target's neck or a knife in their heart - it's not for me. Too much empathy, that's my problem. Usually. But not today. Today is different . . . — Graeme Shimmin

I didn't think that and I didn't verbalize that to myself or within meetings that we ever had, but we wanted to make a hard-nosed, gritty, realistic spy thriller. Roger talked about using lenses. He shot hi-def, but using anamorphic lenses that he'd found from this warehouse. He was so thrilled with that. Him and Romain [Lacourbas] were just like kids in a toy store with their lenses. — Pierce Brosnan

He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart. — Daniel Silva

I'm not a spy, I'm an agent. There's a difference. I'm protecting you, not that you seem to be grateful."
"You're protecting me. How old are you anyway?"
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen? You can't even drive!"
"I can drive," I responded. It's just that certain officers say I may not drive."
"WTF?" she said. "We're going into Afghanistan, and they've sent a pre-driver."
Pre-driver? Was that even a word? And I was here specifically because Talya and Thorne were so young. "I thought you were sixteen," I said.
"I can drive," she responded haughtily. — Axel Avian

On a basic level, he had seen first-hand how his government used the element of fear to accomplish its objectives; the same element of fear that had been used as an excuse to engage its huge war machine in conflicts for the profits of America's oligarchy. — Kenneth Eade

I think it's more difficult now to write a spy thriller with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Many authors have tried, but few have succeeded in capturing the interest of readers. — Nelson DeMille

Ark Storm - what if you could control the weather? — Linda Davies

I've got to think of a hundred and sixty million Americans, not of the three or four that happen to be the ones I love. And it wouldn't be a big thing - security is built on lots of little thing. I don't like to talk about it. (Calhoun Hightower in Danger for Breakfast) — John McPartland

Mr. Rogan, I am magician, not God. — Kenneth Eade

I think it was the sense that Turn is a spy thriller, and that's a genre that really fascinates me, in general. — Jamie Bell

In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did not exist in any spy thriller. 35 — Amos Oz

Believe me, I know a lot about harm's way. It turns sharp left off the road to Shitsville when you're least expecting it. — Philip Kerr

And in a land accustomed to so much anguish, Chase tried to be careful with words. His soccer moms began assigning
nicknames during the first day of official practice: Difom, Kakas, Kochma, and Maldyok, which roughly translated to Deformed, Carcass, Nightmare, and Bad Eye.
He made a new rule regarding nicknames. — Cole Alpaugh

Langley bred a certain type of person with great intention. The human resources department required nearly as sophisticated of analysts as the foreign intelligence department. Apply the massive computing technology of the CIA to hiring, along with the naive appeal of the exciting, though perhaps not so lucrative life of a spy, and any headhunter would be jealous of the results. — Lynn Blackmar

He'd done this hundreds of times: done a job, been drugged with a narcotic that erased his short term memory, and dumped in a seedy hole in the wall locale, where when he climbed out, he would have to figure out where he was, find a payphone, and call in for his next job. — Jennifer Arnett

Obviously, 'Homeland' is not just a spy thriller. It's more than that, but 'Tyrant' will be a bit more of a palace drama. It'll be about the families, but there will be political intrigue as well. — Adam Rayner

I just wanted to buy a spy novel. I didn't want to be in one. — Jeffrey Westhoff

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.
I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator's underpants!
Chase's thoughts raced. — Cole Alpaugh

Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it? — Cole Alpaugh

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

For me, to take a movie and travel the world and go and work with these cultures and an international cast and have this spy thriller that's not just about character but also action and suspense, they're very challenging films as a producer to make, creating stories, creating set pieces that serve this character [Ethan Hunt]. — Tom Cruise

Anyone who thinks life is boring hasn't lived — Fred Cooper

Cono felt embarrassed by the thought that he might have been just another pitiful orphan trying to turn his friends into family, and that he might be blinded by this need, a need that colored his whole life, that ache to offer worth to someone. — Victor Robert Lee

Society tends to stick labels on everything and everyone. The label that is given to you will stick with you for a lifetime. — Kenneth Eade

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal. — Frederick Forsyth

If you live your life in fear and had the opportunity to change. . .could you muster the strength? — P.C. Chinick

Anything that doesn't fit this mode has been shoved into an area of lesser solemnity called 'genre fiction,' and it is here that the spy thriller and the crime story and the adventure story and the supernatural tale and the science fiction, however excellently written, must reside, sent to their rooms, as it were, for the misdemeanor of being enjoyable in what is considered a meretricious way. They invent, and we all know they invent, at least up to a point, and they are, therefore, not about 'real life,' which ought to lack coincidences and weirdness and action-adventure, unless the adventure story is about war, of course, where anything goes, and they are, therefore, not solid. — Margaret Atwood

If this were some kind of entertainment, this would be roughly the point where Rupert said, "We don't have any more time, Professor, you must complete your research as soon as possible," but there was no great sense of urgency, no sense that it even mattered. It was just something that Rudi was interested in, for his own reasons. They could be working on this for years and still not understand it, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
He said, "Look, Professor, a lot of effort went into getting you that information. We'd be grateful if you could make some kind of sense of it reasonably soon.
"There is one thing I can tell you right now," Lev said..."Whoever is running this thing, they're really interested in railways. — Dave Hutchinson

part spy thriller, part cultural and political reclamation, The Sympathizer — Viet Thanh Nguyen