I’d long ago learned that it is only the very devout who toy with heresy. It’s only the Jesuit who complains of the Pope, only the devoted parent who ridicules his child, only the super rich who pick up pennies from the gutter. And in East Berlin it is only the truly faithful who speak treason with such self-assurance.

What chance did I stand between the Communists on one side and the Establishment on the other.

To give my characters a real, or at least a convincing, life demanded more space. Did giving them a domestic dimension mean pressing the pause button in order to relate the dull routines of mortgages, electric bills, children’s ailments and traffic jams? No, that is not the way to treat your readers unless you just don’t care about them; and in that case you should be writing literary novels.

Neither was this the ordinary world of supply and demand; it was a world of abundance.

I’m not rich enough to do anything I want to do. But I know what you mean; I’m rich enough to avoid doing the things I don’t want to do.

It was only a matter of time. The urge to reform the male is something no woman can resist.

Time used to be the panacea for everything, but nowadays our sins are remembered on computers, and random-accessed memories do not fade.

Like all women she was tyrannized by her biology.

Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves.

He remembered the PM saying that every Russian is at heart a chess-player, and every American at heart a public-relations man. Well, Bret Rensselaer’s zeal did nothing to disprove that one. The sheer audacity of the scheme plus Bret’s enthusiasm was enough to persuade him that it was worth a try. Bret nodded to acknowledge the compliment.