Dara Horn Quotes

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.

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.

I love the spy genre.

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent.

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

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.

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

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.

Spy plots are hard, really hard.

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

Spying has always gone on since ancient times.

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

I would have loved to have met some former spies, but they don't readily advertise themselves unless they're not living in Moscow, and even then. I'm sure I've met some without realizing it.

Espionage takes place in the world. Even we commit espionage.

An intelligence service is the ideal vehicle for a conspiracy [against its own government]. Its members can travel about at home and abroad under secret orders, and no questions are asked. Every scrap of paper in the files, its membership, its expenditure of funds, its contacts, even enemy contacts, are state secrets.

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.

Clandestine intelligence operations involve a constant breaking of all the rules.. To put it baldly, such operations are extra legal and sometimes illegal.

Spies go undercover. They take on different personas.

I'm sure, in real life, spying is boring - there's probably a lot of sitting around and plenty of paperwork. But the world seems to think that spying is exciting, and that's how movies get made.

Intelligence services exist to do things that are illegal abroad. They exist to tell lies.

I'm clearly not an international man of mystery.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

With stealth technology, the U.S. could spy on its Cold War adversaries without running the risk of getting caught.

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