Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

I always liked spy stories.

I didn't think that and I didn't verbalize that to myself or within meetings that we ever had, but we wanted to make a hard-nosed, gritty, realistic spy thriller. Roger talked about using lenses. He shot hi-def, but using anamorphic lenses that he'd found from this warehouse. He was so thrilled with that. Him and Romain [Lacourbas] were just like kids in a toy store with their lenses.

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

I like lassic British spy thrillers. Seriously. If the cold war was still on, that's something I'd be writing.

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

'The Man Who Never Was,' by Ewen Montagu, remains the best book about wartime espionage written by an active participant - incomplete, and dry in parts, it nonetheless summons up the ingenuity and sheer eccentricity of those who played this strange and dangerous game.

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

Espionage and counterespionage go together like horse and carriage.

I'm sort of fascinated by the whole espionage crime thing.

'Homeland' is a thriller with a lot of cloak and dagger spy stuff, which is one of the things that makes it so much fun.

Spy plots are hard, really hard.

It was given for all purposes to which a secret service fund should or could be applied to the public benefit—for spies, if the gentleman pleases.

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

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.

Of all those in the army close to the commander, none is more intimate than the secret agent.

I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.

The life of spies is to know, not bee known.

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies... That's the world these folks operate in, and so it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.

That’s the thing about spies. Most of the secrets we keep are from each other.

Everybody thinks it's glamorous and this spy versus spy stuff is so exciting, but working in that industry and being a CIA operative, like a field officer, is tough. That's a difficult job that usually dismantles their lives in some capacity.

Spies are the ears and eyes of Princes.

You couldn't trust anyone or anything that belonged to the world of espionage.

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

So I stepped away, reminding myself that when you're a spy, sometimes all you can do is go on. One foot in front of the other, wherever the narrow path might lead.

I’m really starting to like all this spy work,” Vee said. “When my normal life gets boring, all I have to do is sidle up next to you.