Secret agents

"Where I kick myself is where I think I actually contributed to the myth of the intelligence services being very good."

"In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, in every confrontation that has come my way, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know."

"Every writer wants to be believed. But every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."

"I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world."

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War. The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press."

"What the hell do you think spies are? Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They’re not. They’re just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants, playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? (from a clip from the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an alcoholic cynical British spy)"

"Why was London the only capital in the world that lost its personality at night? Smiley, as he pulled his coat more closely about him, could think of nowhere, from Los Angeles to Berne, which so readily gave up its daily struggle for identity."

"Chic, that’s what he is—a barmaid’s dream of a real gentleman."

"The State is a dream, too, a symbol of nothing at all, an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played with clouds in the sky. But States make war, don’t they, and imprison people?"

"He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors."

"He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year."

"Can’t you see it’s the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour."

"I shall have to wear the special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings."

"He hated the Press as he hated advertising and television, he hated mass-media, the relentless persuasion of the twentieth century. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism."

"I thought it would be valuable to record the events—even if they did not take place."

"He was one of those world-builders who seem to do nothing but destroy: that’s all."

"He caught the midnight plane to Zurich. It was a beautiful night, and through the small window beside him he watched the grey wing, motionless against the starlit sky, a glimpse of eternity between two worlds. The vision soothed him, calmed his fears and his doubts, made him fatalistic towards the inscrutable purpose of the universe. It all seemed to matter so little—the pathetic quest for love, or the return to solitude."

"I used to regard a road sweeper as a person inferior to myself. Now, I rather doubt it. Something is dirty, he makes it clean, and the state of the world is advanced. But I—what have I done? Entrenched a ruling class which is distinguished by neither talent, culture, nor wit; kept alive for one more generation the distinctions of a dead age."

"It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realised that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity."

"I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them."

"Such an effort being with people—on stage all the time."

"“The value of intelligence depends on its breeding.” That was John Landsbury’s favorite dictum. Until you know the pedigree of the information you cannot evaluate a report. Yes, that was what he used to say: “We are not democratic. We close the door on intelligence without parentage.”"

"It was no use relating reports to probability when there was no quantum of knowledge from which to start."

"But so many men learnt strength during the war, learnt terrible things, and put aside their knowledge with a shudder when it ended."

"Carne isn’t a school. It’s a sanatorium for intellectual lepers. The symptoms began when we came down from University; a gradual putrefaction of our intellectual extremities. From day to day our minds die, our spirits atrophy and rot. We watch the process in one another, hoping to forget it in ourselves."

"“Look,” he said. “We talk academic here, you know, wear academic dress and hold high table dinners in the Common Room; we have long graces in Latin that none of us can translate. We go to the Abbey and the wives sit in the hencoop in their awful hats. But it’s a charade. It means nothing."

"“These small, out-of-the-way villages are pretty strange places,” he concluded. “Often only three or four families, all so inbred you can no more sort them out than a barnful of cats. That’s where your village idiots come from. They call it the Devil’s Mark. I call it incest.”"

"It was a peculiarity of Smiley’s character that throughout the whole of his clandestine work he had never managed to reconcile the means to the end. A stringent critic of his own motives, he had discovered after long observation that he tended to be less a creature of intellect than his tastes and habits might suggest; once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust."

"Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety."

"Was she really so angry when Stella refused to take part in the rat race of gentility?"

"Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own."

"“I don’t know,” Cardew replied evenly. “And when I don’t know, I usually keep quiet.”"

"John Lansbury had remarked upon it: “You have sales resistance to the dramatic, Brim; the rare gift of contempt for what is urgent. I know of a dozen people who would pay you five thousand a year for telling them every day that what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”"

"You can’t experiment with tradition."

"He had come to the end of the chase, and was already sickened by the kill."

"I read a story once about a poet who bathed himself in cold fountains so that he could recognise his own existence in the contrast."

"Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results."

"“Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things”; he grinned like a schoolboy. “And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can’t compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?”"

"I would say that since the war, our methods—ours and those of the opposition—have become much the same. I mean you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?"

"“Alec, what do you believe in? Don’t laugh—tell me.” She waited and at last he said: “I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas.”"

"I should have guessed you’d never have the guts to do your own dirty work, Fiedler. It’s typical of your rotten little half-country and your squalid little Service that you get big uncle to do your pimping for you. You are not a country at all, you’re not a government, you’re a fifth-rate dictatorship of political neurotics."

"He possessed, however, that persistent inquisitiveness which for journalists and lawyers is an end in itself."

"If they do not know what they want, how can they be so certain they are right?"

"“It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, ‘half a million liquidated is a statistic, but one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy.’ He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was a cynic. But what he meant is still true: a movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation—or the elimination, Leamas—of a few individuals. It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalising society. Some Roman said it, didn’t he, in the Christian Bible—it is expedient that one man should die for the benefit of many.” “I expect so,” Leamas replied wearily. “Then what do you think? What is your philosophy?” “I just think the whole lot of you are bastards,” said Leamas savagely."

"A man who lives apart, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire."

"I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over-organise. Abroad that passes for efficiency."

"Sometimes she thought Alec was right—you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function."

"The English! The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food—that’s what’s happened to the English."

"“And this is a prison for spies?” Liz persisted. “It is a prison for those who fail to recognize Socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march. Traitors,” she concluded briefly. “But what have they done?” “We cannot build communism without doing away with individualism. You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site.”"

"“Then the people in this prison are intellectuals?” The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said, “they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state. Do you know what Khrushchev said about the counter-revolution in Hungary?” Liz shook her head. She must show interest, she must make the woman talk. “He said it would never have happened if a couple of writers had been shot in time.”"

"What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I’d have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens that they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass that you admire can sleep soundly in their beds at night. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me."

"“This is a war,” Leamas replied. “It’s graphic and unpleasant because it’s fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it’s nothing, nothing at all besides other wars—the last or the next.”"

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world."

"Tessa Quayle: Sir, I’ve just got one question. I just wondered: Whose map is Britain using when it completely ignores the United Nations and decides to invade Iraq? Or do you think it’s more diplomatic to bend the will of a superpower and politely take part in Vietnam the sequel? Justin Quayle: Well, I can’t speak for Sir Bernard. Tessa Quayle: Oh, I thought that’s why you were here. Justin Quayle: I mean, diplomats have to go where they’re sent. Tessa Quayle: So do Labradors. Justin Quayle: Ouch. Well, I think that, no, Sir Bernard would no doubt argue that when peaceful means are exhausted, then - Tessa Quayle: Exhausted? Mr. Quayle, they’re not exactly exhausted, are they? I mean, they’re just — they’re just — no, they are just lying in the way of the tanks. No, let’s face it: We’ve taken 60 years to build up this international organization called the United Nations, which is meant to avoid wars, and now we just blow it up because our car is running out of petrol."

"[She] reports that [the company] recently donated fifty million dollars to a major U.S. teaching hospital, plus salaries and expenses for three top clinicians and six research assistants. Corruption of university Common Room affiliations is even easier: professorial chairs, biotech labs, research foundations, etc. 'Unbought scientific opinion is increasingly hard to find.'"

"America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War."

"The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press."

"The imminent war was planned years before bin Laden struck, but it was he who made it possible. Without bin Laden, the Bush junta would still be trying to explain such tricky matters as how it came to be elected in the first place; Enron; its shameless favouring of the already-too-rich; its reckless disregard for the world’s poor, the ecology and a raft of unilaterally abrogated international treaties. They might also have to be telling us why they support Israel in its continuing disregard for UN resolutions."

"Savages...are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline."

"Luck's just another word for destiny...either you make your own or you're screwed."

"If you're in a hole, don't dig, they say."

"When you assimilate, you choose."

"Elections are a Western jerk-off."

"Why is it that so many men of small stature have more courage than men of size?"

"Peace, gentlemen, it is well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword."

"The friends of my friends are my friends."

"Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain."

"We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease."

"No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn."

"A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, Brother Michael liked to say. A bad man survives but loses his soul."

"Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward."

"The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing."

"It was the other music that he was hearing: the feeling that, while she was telling him one story, he was listening to a different one, and so was she."

"'Findley was not quite a character, thank you!' Frau Ellenberger retorted furiously. 'He wasn't a character at all. Mr Findley was assembled entirely from characteristics stolen from other people!'"

"There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist."

"There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't."

"We were not faced (in the cold war) in a conflict with people who are prepared to die for their cause. We weren't in conflict with people whose idea is to kill as many as they could."

"In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done."

"You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done."

"To operate an intelligence network against the Islamist terror is terribly difficult because they don't have a central command and control center such as we would understand. Therefore you cannot penetrate at the top and find out what will happen on the ground."

"Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be."

"On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution."

"In recent years, Union Bank of California, American Express Bank International, BankAtlantic and Wachovia have all been caught moving huge sums of drug money, but no one went to jail. The banks just admitted to criminal conduct and paid the government a cut of their profits."

"Those critics don’t read their own newspapers, and nor perhaps have they noticed that a former head of MI5, our security service, who was translated to the House of Lords, was recently denied the senior post on a security committee on account of her connections with oligarchs in the Ukraine... supposedly connected with criminal conspiracy."

"If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight."

"What I fear I have seen in the run-up to the Iraq War in this country is the politicization of intelligence to fit the political intentions of our masters. And to my mind, that was a terrible moment in the history, the visible history, of intelligence work in this country, where the intelligence service itself became effectively co-author and signatory to the so-called dodgy dossier, which — on the strength of which Colin Powell was able to present a dire picture of the threat from Iraq, which turned out to be untrue."

"I can’t understand that Blair has an afterlife at all. It seems to me that any politician who takes his country to war under false pretenses has committed the ultimate sin. I think that a war in which we refuse to accept the body count of those that we kill is also a war of which we should be ashamed. We’ve always got to be careful of that. I think that — I wasn’t speaking as a prophet, I was just speaking as an angry citizen, I suppose. I think it’s true that we’ve caused irreparable damage in the Middle East. I think we shall pay for it for a long time."

"If people knew basically, for example, what we had done in Iran when we ousted Mosaddegh through the CIA and the Secret Service here across the way and installed the Shah and trained his ghastly secret police force in all the black arts, the SAVAC, if people understood the extent to which we had humiliated Iran, then they would understand the later developments in Iran and Iran’s posture now. If people would look at the map and see the extent to which Iran is encircled by nuclear powers, they wouldn’t take it perhaps quite so seriously that Iran is seeking to arm itself with — if it is — with nuclear weapons."

"I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies."

"I’d have asked him [Tony Blair] about his faith, because we were told, when journalists asked about Blair’s faith, the reply was, “We don’t do God here.” Well, of course, he does do God, and he reports that his actions have been put before God and confirmed, as if somehow God has signed a chit for him."

"And the second question I would ask him... Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?"

"I think that if anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines it, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore, until it comes as an absolute last resort, and then they’re going to do it rather badly. The United States, I think, still sees war as a necessary part of its existence.."

"I was at odds with the whole notion of a preemptive strike. And I think many Europeans have that in common, of course with very many Americans, too, feel the same. So I would have tried to challenge him in that area."

"The tragedy of Congo is almost — it is appalling. It isn’t really — it isn’t the Congo’s fault even. Congo has become the battleground for other people’s wars, repeatedly. Congo is cursed with amazing mineral resources — diamonds, coltan, now, I believe, up in the northeast of Congo, oil even. God help them, because without any civil society to function, they have been exploited, not simply in terms of boy soldiers, awful gang wars that sweep through the jungle, mass rape as a military weapon, they’ve been subjected to every hell on Earth, these poor people."

"And meanwhile, don’t think that Africans are disposed to corruption where we are not, so to speak. Actually, most of the corruption that has taken place in Congo on a vast scale is Western-driven."

"There are something like 80 or 90 “airlines” — in quotes — registered in Congo, and these simply belong to tiny exploitative companies that harness boy soldiers and kids to dig out the diamonds or the coltan, whatever it may be, and ship it out of Congo without paying duty or anything of that sort. Without paying royalties to anyone is theft. And Congo is being exploited by everybody on account of these reasons, in addition to providing the battleground for other people’s wars."

"The legendary British author John le Carré has died at the age of 89. In the lead-up to the Iraq invasion, John le Carré was a fierce critic of President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In January 2003, he published a widely read essay called “The United States of America Has Gone Mad.” He died on December 12th at the age of 89. Le Carré was a master writer of spy novels, in a career that spanned more than half a century. He worked in the British Secret Service from the late 1950s until the early '60s, at the height of the Cold War, which was the topic of his early novels. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became an international best-seller. Le Carré's gritty depiction of the realities of the spy world contrasted sharply with the characters in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series. John le Carré continued writing, expanding with a series featuring his British spymaster George Smiley, including the hit novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. As the Cold War ended, John le Carré continued to write prolifically, shifting focus to the inequities of globalization, unchecked multinational corporate power, and the role national spy services play in protecting corporate interests. Perhaps best known among his many post-Cold War novels is The Constant Gardener, depicting a pharmaceutical company’s exploitation of unwitting Kenyans for dangerous, sometimes fatal, drug tests."

"To stay awake, I listened to audio-books, the longer the better-novels mostly (John le Carré and Toni Morrison were favorites)"

"All the novels depend for their critical esteem on the author’s dissection of the British class system, of which he is virulently satirical, just as Jane Austen and Charles Dickens were in novels that often gave the appearance of being about something else. It is the exquisite veneer of espionage fiction that sets le Carré apart from modern writers who are far more pretentious and obvious, even if it is they who win Booker Prizes. Unlike so many of those literary lions, le Carré is actually read, and not merely by critics and academics."

"It is this moral struggle, mainly between the inherent decency of the individual as opposed to the corruption any organization, be it the Circus, or a nation, or the school in A Murder of Quality, that places John le Carré at the very pinnacle of contemporary world literature."

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1979 TV series)"

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011 film)"

"Smiley's People (1982 TV series)"

"Kissinger was, as always, preoccupied with other matters of state and his rather complicated social life."

"The KGB is by far the world's largest, the Israeli probably the best, and the Iranian and the South Korean the deadliest."

"The CIA maintains prepackaged stocks of foreign weapons for instant shipment anywhere in the world."

"A strongly antiagency ambassador can make problems for the CIA chief of station."

"The men who control the CIA are of an older, conservative generation which has kept the agency fifteen or twenty years behind the progress of the nation at large."

"Case officers are subject to the same embarassments any tourist suffers-snarled schedules, lost passports, lost money and luggage, and getting off the plane at the wrong destination"

"Customs and immigrations officials are trained to detect the unusual. In some countries they are especially alert to CIA officers"

"I once watched an angry Zairian official very nearly strip and search the person of a CIA GS 17 who had forgotten to speak politely"

"Case officers most fear the US ambassador and his staff, then restrictive headquarters cables, then curious gossipy neighbours in the local community, as potential threats to the operation. Next would come the local police, then the press. Last of all is the KGB."

"But to Stern at that moment it wasn't a hand grenade at all but a no longer distant cloud high above the Temple of the Moon, a driftin memory in the desert of dim pillars and fountains and waterways, mysterious places where myrrh grew, the ruins of his youth. Blinding light then in the mirror behind the bar, sudden death merging the stars and windstorms of his life with darkness in the failure of his seeking, bright blinding light in the night sky at last and Stern's once vast vision of a homeland for all the peoples of his heritage gone as if he had never lived, shattered as if he had never suffered, his futile devotion ended on a clear Cairo night during the uncertain campaigns of 1942 when the eternal disguise he wore to his last clandestine meeting, his face, was ripped way and thrown against a mirror in the half-light of an Arab bar, there to stare at a now immobile landscape fixed to witness his death forever."

"The Great Jerusalem Poker Game for secret control of the city, the ruin of so many adventurers in the period between the two world wars, continued for twelve years before it finally spent itself. During that time thousands of gamblers from around the world lost fortunes trying to win the Holy City, but in the end there were only three men at the table, the same three who had been there in the beginning."

"Now I think you'll both agree that through my various illicit enterprises," Cairo Martyr said, "I control the Moslem Quarter in this city." "The mummy dust king is about to strike," muttered O'Sullivan Beare. But at the same time he knew the claim was true, just as was his own secret control over the Christian Quarter and Munk Szondi's over the Jewish Quarter, religious symbols and trading in futures being just as essential to Jerusalem as mummy dust. "Now then, that's my bet. Control of the Moslem Quarter. I'm putting the Moslem Quarter on the table. If either of you wins, which you won't, it belongs to you. But first you have to match my bet. No openers. The real thing."

"Why is it the Mongols of this world always tell us they're defending us against the Mongols?"

"In North Korea, I lived as Kim Il-sung's robot. In South Korea, I got to live a new life."

"Can my sins be pardoned? They probably won't be."

"I wasn't even allowed time to say goodbye to my friends, I was just told to pack. I was given one last night with my family."

"I was told by a senior officer that before the Seoul Olympics we would take down a South Korean airliner. He said it would create chaos and confusion in South Korea. The mission would strike a severe blow for the revolution."

"When I confessed, I did so reluctantly. I thought my family in North Korea would be in danger; it was a big decision to confess. But I began to realise it would be the right thing to do for the victims, for them to be able to understand the truth."

"Kim Il-sung was a god-like figure. Anything that was ordered by him could be justified. Any order would be carried out with extreme loyalty. You were ready to sacrifice your life."

"There is no other country like North Korea. People outside can't understand. The whole country is set up to show loyalty to the Kim royal family. It's like a religion. People are so indoctrinated. There are no human rights, no freedoms."

"North Korea is in a desperate situation. Discontent with Kim Jong-un is so high; he has to put a lid on it. The only thing he has is nuclear weapons. That's why he has created this sense of war, to try to rally the population. He's doing business with his nuclear weapons."

"North Korea is using the Olympics as a weapon. It’s trying to escape the sanctions by holding hands with South Korea, trying to break free from international isolation."

"When I was given the mission, my role was to disrupt the Seoul Olympics. North Korea thought that hosting the Olympics would permanently divide the Koreas ... and make South Korea more economically powerful than the North. So I was ordered to harm the ‘South Korean puppets’ by hitting the flight."

"My mission was personally signed by Kim Jong-il. At the time, he oversaw all matters relating to South Korea. Living in North Korea is like being in huge prison and being treated like slaves. You didn’t question an order."

"I was brainwashed that giving my life carrying out a mission ordered by the Kim family is an honor. So I took the mission thinking that the bombing will bring revolution in Korea and will contribute to the reunification of the Koreas."

"The moment I boarded the flight I was thinking, 'This is an enemy state'. But then, placing the bomb, I was nervous, anxious, scared of being caught. I had a brief moment thinking that all the people in this plane will die, but I was frightened to even have such feelings. I wasn’t supposed to have such feelings. I was trained only to take orders like a robot. I tried to get rid of the feelings by thinking that for the sake of reunification these people had to be sacrificed. In North Korea, you can’t have these doubts, because if you do, it means your ideology has been corrupted and you’ll be executed or sent to a prison camp."

"North Korea won’t give up its nuclear weapons. They’re its lifeline."

"I received my ration card for the month of September today. As I understand it Iam allowed ten ounces of bread per day. Beyond that, my allotments for the month area as follows: 2 ounces of cheese, 25 ounces of fats, 20 ounces of sugar, 10 ounces of meat, and 6 ounces of coffee. And by coffee they mean 2 ounces of real coffee and 4 ounces of some kind of substitute material. No rice, noodles, or chocolate are available during the month of September as these are reserved for colder months. France would be a paradise for a vegetarian if there was milk, cheese, and butter; but I haven’t seen any butter, and there is no milk."

"I lost many of my friends because they talked to much"