Graham Greene's work must be included in any survey of top-rank spy novels, and 'Our Man in Havana' may be his best.

I invented the historical spy novel.

I grew up reading genre writers, and to the degree that Eric Ambler and Graham Greene are genre writers, I'm a genre writer.

I never got any training in how to write novels as an English major at Oberlin, but I got some great training for writing novels from anthropology and from Margaret Mead.

I don't work Sunday any more... The Sabbath is a very reasonable idea. Otherwise, you work yourself to death.

When I get asked about novelists I like, they tend to be white, male, and British, like Graham Greene. They write the kind of declarative sentences I like. I don't like to be deflected by acrobatics.