Anatole Broyard Quotes

The king hath note of all that they intend, by interception which they dream not of.

There is only one law of espionage—there are always going to be spies.

You can probably forgive the top spy for lying about spying. Lying is part of the job description. It’s what spies do.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

I spent a whole career infiltrating places.

Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.

This is the wonderful thing about espionage, nothing exists any more.

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

I saw a limit to what I was giving as kind of a scam I was running on the KGB, by giving them people that I knew were their double agents fed to us.

In my head, I think I'd make a perfect spy, but in reality, I don't think I'd fare very well.

I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.

I've known several spies who have wanted to become novelists. And novelists who became spies, of course.

I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing.

Female spies typically represented one of two extremes: the seductress who employed her wiles to manipulate men, and the cross-dresser who blended in by impersonating them.

It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used.

Espionage, for the most part, involves finding a person who knows something or has something that you can induce them secretly to give to you. That almost always involves a betrayal of trust.

The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

There will always be spies. We have to have them. Without them we wouldn't have got Osama bin Laden - it took us years, but it happened.

For something that's supposed to be secret, there is a lot of intelligence history. Every time I read one book, two more are published.

Since real spies are so good, you never really know what actual spying is. But I do think spying is a lot more dangerous than we are led to believe.

I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

Spy plots are hard, really hard.

From the outside, the CIA seems pretty exotic, but from the inside, it's a big, bureaucratic place. Think 'post office with spies.'

I concluded that infiltration of the Klan was the only way to get evidence that would stand up in court. There was no one else around to do it.

Having watched the form of our traitors for a number of years, I cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.