Spy Novel Quotes

#1. I wrote three mysteries and then a contemporary spy novel that was unbelievably derivative - completely based on 'The Conversation,' the movie with Gene Hackman. Amazingly, the character in the book looks exactly like ... Gene Hackman.

Alan Furst

#2. Dominion is a spy novel, a love story, and also I hope gives some sense of the difficulties faced by dissidents under any totalitarian regime: the threat of imprisonment, torture and death; the threat to one's family, the terror of being alone in a hostile world.

C.J. Sansom

#3. I like to take certain aspects of genre fiction and modify them in my own way. 'Your Republic Is Calling You' follows the form of a spy novel, but it leads readers into a world of Kafkaesque irrationality.

Kim Young-ha

#4. I just wanted to buy a spy novel. I didn't want to be in one.

Jeffrey Westhoff

#5. We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

John Le Carre

#6. I think in some ways what Snowden is, is he's a mix of a cold war spy novel and post-9/11 spy novel.

Alex Berenson

#7. I invented the historical spy novel.

Alan Furst

#8. Like any good spy novel, the Cox Report alleges that Chinese spies penetrated four U.S. weapons research labs and stole important information on seven nuclear warhead designs.

Charles Bass

#9. I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel.

Alan Furst

#10. Tucking my nose into a book makes me completely oblivious to my surroundings. I would have made a terrible spy in the army
the first person to hand me a novel would have been able to shoot my head clean off without me noticing.

Alyxandra Harvey

#11. Limp finally spoke. Do you think you could kill a person and not get all crazy about it?

Cole Alpaugh

#12. The two smallest boys were cut down first, bodies bounding in different directions as they were shot from opposite sides of the field, like pinballs caught in a tight corner.

Cole Alpaugh

#13. Shit, man, if you see a dog scratching at the dirt trying to dig something up, walk away real fast, he said, then pulled a little square of paper from his pocket and swallowed whatever was folded inside.

Cole Alpaugh

#14. In a short story by Chekhov or a novel by Balzac he found mysteries which, so far as he was aware, did not exist in any spy thriller. 35

Amos Oz

#15. Grandpa said that we could solve a lot of the world's problems if we considered cats and dogs edible. Like the neighbor's dog who goes to the bathroom in his flower garden. And know what else?

Cole Alpaugh

#16. Bearing witness from the sides of the room, ten or more lepers shouted at the bizarre scene, "Diable! Diable!" And then chants of some sort, or prayers, followed by more shouts of "Diable!" They were hurling these words at Moreau like stones.

Cole Alpaugh

#17. In 1996, when my first novel, 'Masquerade,' was published, I knew international thrillers - or spy novels, if you prefer - had been the domain of male authors for decades.

Gayle Lynds

#18. My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.

Sherman Alexie