Spies Quotes

“Fedin laughed outright, a grim, calculating gesture as hard and unfeeling as cold steel. “Twenty million Russians have been slaughtered by the Fascists in the last six years..... Always remember this, Squadron Leader. It was our war, our victory and now it is our Berlin. We tolerate your presence in this city… if that.”
― KGE Konkel, Who Has Buried the Dead?: From Stalin to Putin … The last great secret of World War Two

“Of course. Because at the Gallagher Academy, "precautions" usually equals "voluntary shock therapy.”
― Ally Carter, Out of Sight, Out of Time

“We're going to be okay."

Here's the thing about being a spy: sometimes all you have are your lies. They protect your cover and keep your secrets, and right then I needed to believe that it was true even when all the facts said otherwise.”
― Ally Carter, United We Spy

“There are many ways a self-respecting (not to mention sane) teenage girl might react to having a teenage boy suddenly in her bedroom in the middle of the night.
Hit.
Panic.
Flail.
Freeze.”
― Ally Carter, Only the Good Spy Young

“I didn’t know what was more disturbing—the fact that something was obviously wrong, or that three faculty members of the world’s premiere spy school had forgotten to lock the door.”
― Ally Carter, I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

“We are aware of your association with the Russian mafia, Mr. Linkov. Of course, you do not want this publicized. It would mean the end of your diplomatic career, perhaps imprisonment.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“Jabir listened but was not convinced.  “Iraq and Iran haven’t gotten along for many centuries. Why should we now?”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Sure as hell doesn’t seem that Williams’ study and findings were general. This man talked from fact. I bet this is the scientist and study they want.”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“Your long-term association with military intelligence is important. Let’s talk about what you might notice in them. Since this happened, one or two may have changed behavioral characteristics. Are there any with peculiarities different from when they started?”
― Karl Braungart, Fatal Identity

“There isn’t a time set for Nikulin’s transfer. All we know for now is two Iraqi agents are going to Amsterdam—at least we think it’s that city. And we don’t know when this will occur. I will call you when we find out.”
― Karl Braungart, Lost Identity

“The sirens were getting louder as Damino ran to him, handcuffing Khalizad from behind and putting her in the vehicle. Together they lifted the inert Afnan and his cart into the van’s cargo space.”
― Karl Braungart, Triple Deception

“From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. ”
― John Updike

“Do you know, when I am with you I am not afraid at all. It is a magic altogether curious that happens inside the heart. I wish I could take it with me when I leave.

It is sad, my Grey. We are constrained by the rules of this Game we play. There is not one little place under those rules for me to be with you happily. Or apart happily, which is what makes it so unfair.

I have discovered a curious fact about myself. An hour ago I was sure you were dead, and it hurt very much. Now you are alive, and it is only that I must leave you, and I find that even more painful. That is not at all logical.

Do you know the Symposium, Grey? The Symposium of Plato. [He] says that lovers are like two parts of an egg that fit together perfectly. Each half is made for the other, the single match to it. We are incomplete alone. Together, we are whole. All men are seeking that other half of themselves. Do you remember?

I think you are the other half of me. It was a great mix-up in heaven. A scandal. For you there was meant to be a pretty English schoolgirl in the city of Bath and for me some fine Italian pastry cook in Palermo. But the cradles were switched somehow, and it all ended up like this…of an impossibility beyond words.

I wish I had never met you. And in all my life I will not forget lying beside you, body to body, and wanting you.”
― Joanna Bourne, The Spymaster's Lady

“A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life”
― Honore de Balzac

“George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge”
― John Le Carre'

“What am I dying for? he cried back. I'm dying because this world I'm living in isn't worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you've got a reason to live.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen

“Spies and parents never sleep.”
― Linda Gerber

“And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini's armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn't sure what came next. So, don't trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.”
― Alan Furst, Spies of the Balkans

“Spies have years of training and experience. I had half an hour of panic and a pig.”
― M.E. Castle, Popular Clone

“When spies aren't in sewer tunnels, they're usually crawling through air ducts. I'm not sure exactly why this is. It makes you kind of wonder: Are spies just frustrated maintenance men? Is that what spies really want to be doing? Plumbing? Air conditioner repair? I fear the day that they follow their dream, lay down their laser-gun cigarette lighters, and pick up wrenches. Our country will be in great peril, though with fewer toilets backing up and more of our houses at a uniform sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit.”
― M.T. Anderson, Agent Q, or The Smell of Danger!

“Who do we seek, my spies? Again and again, I announce to the world: I. M. Realdom! I. M. Realdom! I. M. Realdom! I cannot say it too often! Do you have that?”
― M.T. Anderson, Agent Q, or The Smell of Danger!

“If you have read many adventure novels, you'll know that spies spend about half of their time in the sewers. They run along sewer tunnels, shooting. They find secret hideaways in sewers. They take weird funeral barges through sewers, poled along by old men in hoods. In fact, if a spy's kid wants to get a message to their mom or dad, the easiest way to do it is just to flush it down the toilet.”
― M.T. Anderson, Agent Q, or The Smell of Danger!

“He would be painstaking in his approach, meticulous. For there was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.”
― Daniel Silva

“It was only during an uncharacteristic period of introspection, brought on by his forced retirement from the service, that Shamron had settled on the causes of his chronic sleeplessness. He had told so many lies, spun so many deceptions, that sometimes he could no longer tell fact from fiction, truth from untruth. And then there was the killing. He had killed with his own hands, and he had ordered other men, younger men, to kill for him. A life of betrayal and violence had taken its toll. Some men go crazy, some burn out. Ari Shamron had been sentenced to remain forever awake.”
― Daniel Silva

“I told him to watch out,' the Roach says. .... 'But would he listen? I'd have ordered him, if not for the little matter of him being the High King.'

'Cardan sent you?' I ask.

'Not exactly,' says the Roach, moving the light so that I can see the person with him, the one I elbowed. The High King of Elfhame in plain brown wool, a cloak on his back of a fabric so dark it seems to absorb light, leaf blade in the scabbard on his hip. He wears no crown on his brow, no rings on his fingers, nor gold point limning his cheekbones. He looks every inch a spy from the Court of Shadows, down to the sneaky smile pulling at a corner of his beautiful mouth.

Looking at him, I feel a little light-headed from some combination of shock and disbelief. 'You shouldn't be here.'

'I said that, too,' the Roach goes on. 'Really, I miss the days when you were in charge. High Kings shouldn't be gallivanting around like common ruffians.'

Cardan laughs. 'What about uncommon ruffians?'

I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, and his laugh gutters out. The Roach turns his gaze to the ceiling. I am abruptly aware that I am in a nightgown Oriana lent me, one that is entirely too diaphanous.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“Tonight, she went prowling at two of the local clubs. She intrigued him. It was the feline way she moved, fluid and graceful, a lioness, in a slinky black dress. She disappeared in the shadows, seen when she wanted to be, invisible when she wished. He knew the moment she detected him, by the subtle shift of her eyes, the slight turn of her head. The lioness caught the scent of the lion, and at 11:30 pm, she led him back to her den.

The meeting did not go as planned, then again, lions are not tame. —Reuben ben Judah and Kayah ben Samuel”
― Staci Morrison, M3-The Outsiders

“I have President Trump in the same classification as Edward Snowden.”
― Steven Magee

“A mighty ideological foundation for preparing a new military command”
― Danny Frederick Wallace

“A spy for a spy just makes for another lie.”
― M. R. Mason, A Cold Night in Marseilles: Kat Tessen Thriller File #1

“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.”
― John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold