David Ignatius Quotes

I invented the historical spy novel.

I've always had a great affection for espionage stories. I like weaving them, and I like thrillers.

I actually thought, like, I was sure 'Get Smart' and, like, 'James Bond' movies, I was sure that that's what real life was like.

The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days.

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

Charles Kiss is a legendary James Bond-style British spy. And McGrath is the young idealist who is given the task of following in his footsteps. It's a mission that forces McGrath to question everything he thought he believed in.

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.

It's rather fun writing a female spy, because she has so much more kit. Bond never carried a hair dryer or a makeup bag. And he certainly didn't wear an uplift bra.

However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it.

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

I'd be a terrible secret agent. I can't keep a secret and I'm not sneaky.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

It was awesome and liberating to play a Russian spy.

The more real I got on 'The Bourne Identity,' the more interesting it got. So 'Fair Game' was the chance to go a few more steps in that direction. In fact, I discovered this whole other world that I had ignored in the 'Bourne' franchise, which is the domestic life of a spy, and how you make the two halves of your life coexist.

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

It is my writing dilemma. 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.

Anyone who tells you he deals with the CIA is either a fool (for admitting it) or a braggart.

Whenever you read a spy story in the press, you know you are being spun.

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

If you’re going to be involved with espionage, you’ve got to be motivated. It’s not fun and games. It’s dirty and dangerous. There’s always the chance that you’re going to get burned.

It's a very dangerous and lonely thing, I imagine, to be a spy: to have friendships that are deceptions, that are not honest.

I would be a terrible CIA officer in real life.

I always wanted to play characters, and that was definitely one - a Russian spy.

Oh, I can keep many secrets, so I would be a phenomenal secret agent. I love secrets.