Terry Hayes Quotes

I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story.

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 invented the historical spy novel.

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.

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

I've always loved spy stories. Who can resist?

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.

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

I love the spy genre.

Look realistically at espionage thrillers again. They're not only alive, readers are excited about them.

I love a great conspiracy story. Who doesn't?

To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

When I think of a story, somehow it just always seems to come out involving spooks and spies and government skullduggery.

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.

I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.

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.

I love thrillers, and I always have.

My father was famous for his photographic memory. He was in the OSS. They trained him to be captured on purpose and to read upside down and backwards and commit to memory every document in Germany he saw as he was being interrogated - every schedule on every wall. So, that photographic memory somehow made its way to me when I was young.

I'll tell you what I really enjoy. We all go to the movies, we all watch television, we know what they're about, how they work. When the main character is a cop or a spy, it's very exciting, but I also very much enjoy when the main characters are nobodies - a trucker.

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.

Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice.