American - Writer | 1930 -
I was swimming in my swimming pool when 'The Secret Lovers' popped entire into my head. I got out, dried off, went upstairs, and finished the book in about 50 days.
Charles McCarry
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I have to tell you, I'm a happy man. I've lived the life I wanted to live. I've written the books I wanted to write. No publisher has ever even suggested that I change so much as a phrase - commas and periods, yes - and I suspect that I have a lot of serious readers; in fact, I know.
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People are dying to tell you their secrets; it's just a matter of getting the conversation going in the right direction. If you just let people fill the silence, they will let you the most extraordinary things. I sometimes wonder if afterward they remember what they've said.
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Espionage and counterespionage go together like horse and carriage.
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I've certainly written a lot of things that have more or less come true. But I don't have a gift for prophecy.
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I cannot grasp the difference between killing people with drones or rifles and knives. The objective in war is to kill the enemy before he kills you. I can't fathom the almost religious zeal with which the use of drones is being opposed.
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China, hidden and mysterious, has always interested me.
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Writing for me is not a premeditated act. It just happens - characters keep coming out of nowhere and doing things I never expected them to do. The most persistent and most productive of these has been Paul Christopher, whom I didn't expect to see again after he appeared in 'The Miernik Dossier.'
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Writing has taught me a lot - though far from everything - about writing, so as time has passed, it has become more pleasurable if not easier. I've done other things in life, but writing is by a factor of 10 the most difficult among them. And, of course, you never achieve what you set out to achieve, so you must keep on trying to do better.
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Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.
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I've always been baffled by critics of the CIA, who are horrified that it does illegal things. That is the purpose of an intelligence service: to perform illegal acts.
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I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I must be. The writers I've admired have been not so very different from myself: Evelyn Waugh, for example, that kind of crystalline prose. And I've always admired W. Somerset Maugham more than any other writer.
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