David Leitch Quotes

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.

'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion.

For John le Carre, it was always who's betraying who: the hall-of-mirrors kind of thing. When you go back to the '30s, it's a case of good vs. evil, and no kidding. When I have a hero who believes France and Britain are on the right side, a reader is not going to question that.

My whole life has been a lie.

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

I grew up on all of the great spy movies and TV series of the Sixties - not just Bond, but Derek Flint and the Avengers and Modesty Blaise and the Man from UNCLE and on and on. Every time I sit down to work on Cinderella, I'm writing a love letter to all of those characters.

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.

What you get in the Cold War is 'the wilderness of mirrors' where you have to figure out what's good and what's evil. That's good for John le Carre, but not me.

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

I handed over names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union.

When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.

To get art nowadays, in cinema or books or anything, that grapples with the possibility of a meaningless universe... it just doesn't happen any more. In even the most indie of the indie films, everything has to come to some kind of neat conclusion.

I'm a huge fan of the 'James Bond' genre.

John le Carre's 'The Night Manager' is a relentlessly exhilarating thriller with profound emotional depths.

The only thing I ever withheld from the KGB were the names of two agents whom I personally had known and handled and had a particular feeling for.

I am amazed; until the day I die I shall wonder how Whittaker Chambers got into my house to use my typewriter.

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.

The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible.

Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.

To live is to feel oneself lost.

It's impossible for somebody to defect from the United States. Edward Lee Howard is not a defector. He's a traitor.

Ian Fleming and Norman Felton were friends. 'U.N.C.L.E.' was basically a tongue-in-cheek 'Bond.' It wasn't quite as serious and dramatic as 'Bond,' nor did we have the budget for that.

I just thought 'Blue' was a great premise and a great set-up for conflict. I love the idea of exploring a character who's living a secret life and is going to drown in the lies she's telling.

Charles McCarry is the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue - by the breadth of Alan Furst, by the fathom of Eric Ambler, by any measure.

'Codename Baboushka' is an action-packed modern pulp spy thriller, in the sort of British tradition of 'Modesty Blaise', New Avengers and of course James Bond. It's a book about Contessa Annika Malikova, the last of a noble Russian line and an enigmatic, mysterious figure in New York high society.