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" Sometimes James Bond movies drive me crazy. They're fun to watch, but they don't have anything to do at all with what intelligence officers really do. "

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" The American experiment has always depended on a measure of tolerance and good sense. "

" It's easier for China to assert its maritime power by creating artificial islands in the South China Sea than by defying the U.S. Pacific Fleet with an aircraft carrier. "

" Movies have a way of distilling moments in our culture, and 'Gravity' may be the defining film for the lost-in-space year of 2013: Nothing works. "

" Real security will come when it's a moneymaker for private companies who want to satisfy public demand for an Internet that isn't crawling with bugs. "

" The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails. "

" Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Centcom, is probably the most decorated officer of his generation. "

" The ISI is above all a paramilitary organization. It doesn't do all that much collection of intelligence. It's not a very good spy agency, but it's good at running covert action. "

" A disaffected America can be drawn into a civilized - but disruptive - dialogue about political change and reformation. "

" Journalists couldn't do their jobs overseas without taking risks, and the same is true for diplomats and intelligence officers. "

" Sometimes good countries are so traumatized by events that they lose their bearings and embrace bad leaders. "

" Things felt pretty crazy on earth in 1969, but the cosmos was friendly. Astronauts had round-trip tickets; they got home. "

" American politics, like most things, is a story of what statisticians describe as the reversion to the mean. "

" Russia isn't likely to have any more military success in Syria and Iraq than has the United States. "

" My guess is that before Obama departs, he will adopt some of the more aggressive military options he has been resisting, such as 'safe zones' inside Syria and more aggressive deployment of U.S. special forces. "

" Foreign policy is about the execution of ideas as much as their formulation. "

" The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. "

" CIA officers aren't idiots. They knew they were heading into deep water - legally and morally - when they signed up for the interrogation program. That's part of the agency's ethos - doing the hard jobs that other departments prudently avoid. "

" I've tried, in 'Bloodmoney,' to tell a story that gets at the crazy relationship between the ISI and the CIA, these absolutely fascinating, often mutually destructive two scorpions in a bottle kind of relationship that they have. "

" The surest way to empower the new terrorist gangs would be to withdraw from U.S. diplomatic missions. "

" Apple chief executive Tim Cook is such a respected figure that it's easy to overlook the basic problem with his argument about encryption: Cook is asserting that a private company and the interests of its customers should prevail over the public's interest as expressed by our courts. "

" As so many writers know, the experience of creating an imaginary world is closer to dreaming than it is to normal, grit-your-teeth work. It's preconscious rather than conscious. Ideas fall into your head, and the book writes you, rather than the other way around. "

" I began writing fiction because it was the only way to tell all the intricacies of a real-life spy story. "

" We're grappling with the same issue facing all advanced economies - how to revive growth and distribute its fruits more fairly. An America that can tackle that problem head-on can perhaps help revive a stagnant global economy. "

" Fear brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. It's a test of character, for individuals and nations. "

" When historians look at the Obama presidency, they're likely to credit him especially for doing the politically unpopular things that were needed in 2009 to salvage the financial wreckage. "

" Make the financial industry pay for its mistakes. That's the idea behind the best of the Obama administration's reform proposals: If banks issue securities backed by mortgages, say, then require them to hold some of that paper so that they will bear some of the losses. "

" The CIA in real life, we know, is looking for new kinds of cover. It's looking for new platforms, as they like to say, and it's trying to use the revolution in communications technology, the ability to use all sorts of corporate entities in ways that are hard to detect to get our spies in the places where they need to be. "

" As Obama prepares to begin the last year of his presidency, he stands in an unusual position on the national stage: He is the rationalist, a creature of intellect rather than emotion. "

" We haven't usually had to face the extreme questions about liberty and order because we're not a nation of extremists. We love freedom and good government both. "

" The nation's chronic weakness is its political system, which is nearing dysfunction. If the U.S. can elect better political leadership, it should be able to manage problems better than most competitors. "