In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy. ↗
Our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union. ↗
I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning. ↗
I'm not like a poker player. I'm not into bluff. My way is to look someone in the eye and tell them the way I'm intending to go. My cards are always on the table. ↗
The Queen's intelligence network is a hell of a lot better than anyone's in this palace. Bar none. She knows everything. I don't know how she does it. And she sees everything. ↗
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. ↗
Anyone can write a story based on the kind of horror where you see a guy in car and then there's the bad guy in the back seat. It's infantile to rely on that for telling a story. That's like going to bed and thinking there's a monster under your bed. It's silly. ↗
I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that. ↗
