“Yes, I still think of him as that, call him that. It's as real as any of his other names.”

“Boredom had not been among the dangers that the SOE had prepared him for. No pompous little officer had stood in front of his class and said, "Right, chaps, today we're going to learn how to deal with a particularly nasty little situation that secret agents tend to find themselves in: being bored abso-bloody-lutely rigid".”

“This line of reasoning could have frightened him, but it did not. He gained a certain strength from it. Because, after all, what can be imagined can be achieved.At the head of the stairs, he paused to straighten a mask that had been knocked askew.”

“Fundamentalism - of any variety - is a form of illiteracy, in that it asserts that it is necessary to read only one book.”

“Sentimentality and nostalgia are closely related. Kissing cousins. I have no time for nostalgia, though. Nostalgics believe the past is nicer than the present. It isn't. Or wasn't. Nostalgics want to cuddle the past like a puppy. But the past has bloody teeth and bad breath. I look into its mouth like a sorrowing dentist.”

“So? You think people stop talking to you when they are dead?”

“You do not win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making sure that some poor bastard dies for his.”