Helen Fielding Quotes

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.

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

If I wasn't an actor, I'd be a secret agent.

I spent a whole career infiltrating places.

I really wanted to be a spy. I guess it's a bit like acting, where you play a role.

Breaking a cardinal rule of spy craft, I actually let it be known that I wanted to work for the CIA.

I think everyone's always interested in playing a spy, right? That's something we grow up admiring, which is so strange, but it's just a very clever and quick world that we all want to be a part of.

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.

I love the spy genre.

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

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

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

I've been a spy for almost all of my adult life - I don't like being in the spotlight.

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

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 always liked spy stories.

It was awesome and liberating to play a Russian spy.

I play Dr. Karen Boyer in 'Spies Like Us.' She's strong, intelligent and dedicated and just happens to be beautiful.

What I really found was that the one similarity between 'Covert Affairs' and 'Fair Game' is a deep love and admiration and fascination with the home life of a spy.

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

I've always wanted to be a spy, and frankly I'm a little surprised that British intelligence has never approached me.

There are few archbishops in espionage. He's on our side and that's all that matters. Besides, one needn't ask him to one's club.

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.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

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