Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one. Charles McCarry Read Quote
People are dying to tell you their secrets; it’s just a matter of getting the conversation going in the right direction. If you just let people fill the silence, they will let you the most extraordinary things. I sometimes wonder if afterward they remember what they’ve said. Charles McCarry Read Quote
Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens – characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn’t expect to see again after he appeared in ‘The Miernik Dossier.’ Charles McCarry Read Quote
I’ve certainly written a lot of things that have more or less come true. But I don’t have a gift for prophecy. Charles McCarry Read Quote
I cannot grasp the difference between killing people with drones or rifles and knives. The objective in war is to kill the enemy before he kills you. I can’t fathom the almost religious zeal with which the use of drones is being opposed. Charles McCarry Read Quote
Richard M. Helms, the first director of Central Intelligence to rise from the ranks, was fond of saying that the CIA had been founded to make sure that there would never be another Pearl Harbor. Underlying this mission impossible was the wishful supposition that an America that knew everything could prevent anything. Charles McCarry Read Quote
I have to tell you, I’m a happy man. I’ve lived the life I wanted to live. I’ve written the books I wanted to write. No publisher has ever even suggested that I change so much as a phrase – commas and periods, yes – and I suspect that I have a lot of serious readers; in fact, I know. Charles McCarry Read Quote
Anything that’s secret, clandestine, loaded with such a supercargo of speculation, misinformation, disinformation and, for that matter, accurate revelations, creates an appetite. Charles McCarry Read Quote
