Spy Movie Quotes

...nothing ever happens quickly (except when it does). Nothing is ever, ever easy (except when it is). And, most of all, nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan (except in the movies).

So I hear we get to go to town this weekend. Want to catch a movie or something? --Z P.S. That is, if Jimmy doesn't mind. Translation: This weekend might be a good chance for us to see each other outside our school in a social environment, free of competetiton. I do not view other boys as threats, and I enjoy making them seem insignificant by calling them the wrong names. (Translation by Macey McHenry)

I know in the spy movies it always looks really cool when the operative goes from a maid's uniform to a slinky, sexy, ballgown in the amount of time it takes an elevator to climb three floors. Well, I don't know how it is for TV spies, but I can tell you that even with Velcro, the art of the quick change is one that must take a lot of practice (not to mention better lighting than one is likely to find in a tunnel that was once part of the underground railroad).

If you don't want them to find you, changing your last name seems a fairly elementary first step. Trust me, I'm an expert. I've watched a lot of spy movies.

Never presume to know a person based on the one dimensional window of the internet. A soul can’t be defined by critics, enemies or broken ties with family or friends. Neither can it be explained by posts or blogs that lack facial expressions, tone or insight into the person’s personality and intent. Until people “get that”, we will forever be a society that thinks Beautiful Mind was a spy movie and every stranger is really a friend on Facebook.

She was born under the sign of Gemini. And that stands for the good and evil twin. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde both hiding and residing inside her heart. Her good twin was not bad at all. But her evil twin was even better, and showed up to be way too fatal!

I would love to say that I wrote (Good Will Hunting). Here is the truth. In my obit it will say that I wrote it. People don't want to think those two cute guys wrote it. What happened was, they had the script. It was their script. They gave it to Rob [Reiner] to read, and there was a great deal of stuff in the script dealing with the F.B.I. trying to use Matt Damon for spy work because he was so brilliant in math. Rob said, "Get rid of it." They then sent them in to see me for a day - I met with them in New York - and all I said to them was, "Rob's right. Get rid of the F.B.I. stuff. Go with the family, go with Boston, go with all that wonderful stuff." And they did. I think people refuse to admit it because their careers have been so far from writing, and I think it's too bad. I'll tell you who wrote a marvelous script once, Sylvester Stallone. Rocky's a marvelous script. God, read it, it's wonderful. It's just got marvelous stuff. And then he stopped suddenly because it's easier being a movie star and making all that money than going in your pit and writing a script. But I did not write [Good Will Hunting], alas. I would not have written the "It's not your fault" scene. I'm going to assume that 148 percent of the people in this room have seen a therapist. I certainly have, for a long time. Hollywood always has this idea that it's this shrink with only one patient. I mean, that scene with Robin Williams gushing and Matt Damon and they're hugging, "It's not your fault, it's not your fault." I thought, Oh God, Freud is so agonized over this scene. But Hollywood tends to do that with therapists. (from 2003 WGA seminar)

Don't mention your move before you make a move.

I am a sleeper, a spy, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not a misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, though some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.

And she remembered her costar in Phantoms, Ben Affleck, seeing her visibly distraught immediately after the incident, and hearing where she’d just come from, and replying, “God damn it, I told him to stop doing this.” McGowan believed she’d been “blacklisted” after the incident. “I barely worked in movies ever again.

She's wacko. I should have known she was wacko from the beginning. She had a thing about spies. Was always watching those stupid Bond movies. I'd be banging her from behind, and she'd be watching James Bond on the television. Can you believe it?" ~(Written during Pierce Brosnan's 007 days so, yeah, I CAN believe it!) "Four To Score

Here’s the thing you need to know about surveillance: it’s boring. Sure, sometimes we blow stuff up and jump off buildings and/or moving trains, but most of the time we just hang around waiting for something to happen (a fact that almost never makes it into the movies), so I might have felt pretty silly if I were a normal girl and not a highly trained secret-agent-type person as I sat on that park bench, trying to act normal when, by definition, I’m anything but.

The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. Most of the commerce is centred on the slightly older women, as if the majority of the clients prefer experience and worldliness. The younger, prettier girls seem to do the least business, apparent innocence being only a minority preference, much as it is for the aging crones in the alley who seem as if they’ve been standing there for a thousand years. In the dingy foyer of the hotel is an old poster from La Comédie Française, sadly peeling from the all behind the desk. Cyrano de Bergerac, it proclaims, a play by Edmond Rostand. I will stand for a few moments to take in its fading gaiety. It is a laughing portrait of a man with an enormous nose and a plumed hat. He is a tragic clown whose misfortune is his honour. He is a man entrusted with a secret; an eloquent and dazzling wit who, having successfully wooed a beautiful woman on behalf of a friend cannot reveal himself as the true author when his friend dies. He is a man who loves but is not loved, and the woman he loves but cannot reach is called Roxanne. That night I will go to my room and write a song about a girl. I will call her Roxanne. I will conjure her unpaid from the street below the hotel and cloak her in the romance and the sadness of Rostand’s play, and her creation will change my life.

Real spies don't have all the cool gadgets you see in the movies," Dak said, watching Sera struggle with the lock. "Though I sure wish we had a sonic screwdriver right about now.

gorgeous. They used it as the library in the Harry Potter movies.

And NBC is letting you walk away with all this?” Remnick asked. “Who is this person at NBC? Oppenheim?” “Oppenheim,” I confirmed. “And he’s a screenwriter, you say?” “He wrote Jackie,” I replied. “That,” Remnick said gravely, “was a bad movie.

Sometimes, even spies don’t make the right decisions. Sometimes we get confused. And this isn’t a movie,” I added, “so there’s no guarantee that the good side will win. Do you understand?” “The good side will still win,” she said bravely. “We’re just going to have to work for it instead of watching it happen.

PAUL IS SOMEBODY WHO DOES THINGS WITH ENTHUSIASM, which makes people feel appalled and insulted at things he chooses to do. If you’re under thirty, you have never heard of a song called “Spies Like Us,” and I am a horrible person for being the one to tell you. It was the theme for a big-budget Hollywood spy comedy starring Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd. Nobody saw the movie, but Paul’s theme was worse than the movie could have been. MTV played it constantly during the 1985 holiday season, though radio wouldn’t touch it. Paul does a rap that goes something like, “Oooh oooh, no one can dance like you.” In the video he plays multiple roles as members of a studio band, mugging and biting his lower lip. The drumming is where his cheeky-chappy act gets profoundly upsetting. You see this video, you’re going to be depressed for at least ten minutes about the existential condition of Paul-dom. His enthusiasm makes you doubt the sincerity of his other public displays. It makes you doubt yourself. You might think it’s a cheap laugh but it will cost you something.

I’ve spied on his emails that he writes back and forth with Tyler each day, but I can’t connect that Torin with the Torin I know. My Torin doesn’t like to make eye contact. My Torin is abrupt. My Torin makes sounds of distress when the movies get too loud. My Torin behaves erratically and doesn’t seem to give me the time of day aside from the trails of pennies he leaves everywhere.

and, of course, the self-accursation, the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual hostility in which he seems to stand to society. For all this loss and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustrious thoughts. He is the world's eye.

Lula swung into the room. “What’s going on? What did I miss? I couldn’t get a hair appointment so I came for lunch.” She spied the guy on the stretcher. “Holy crap! What happened to him?” “He tried to kidnap Grandma, so my mother took him out with her iron,” I said. Lula turned to my mom. “Way to go, Mrs. P.!” She did a high five and a down low with her. “Is he dead?” “Not yet,” Grandma said. “Good thing,” Lula said. “If California found out a guy got killed with an iron, they’d ban them, and all those movie stars would be wrinkled all the time.

I’m just getting to the good stuff (Cressida must seduce Nigel to gain access to the spy codes!) when Josh walks out of his house to get the mail. He sees me too; he lifts his hand like he’s just going to wave and not come over, but then he does. “Hey, nice onesie,” he says as he makes his way across the driveway. It’s faded light blue with sunflowers and it ties around the neck. I got it from the vintage store, 75 percent off. And it’s not a onesie. “This is a sunsuit,” I tell him, going back to my book. I try to subtly hide the cover with my hand. The last thing I need is Josh giving me a hard time for reading a trashy book when I’m just trying to enjoy a relaxing afternoon. I can feel him looking at me, his arms crossed, waiting. I look up. “What?” “Wanna see a movie tonight at the Bess? There’s a Pixar movie playing. We can take Kitty.” “Sure, text me when you want to head over,” I say, turning the page of my book. Nigel is unbuttoning Cressida’s blouse and she’s wondering when the sleeping pill she slipped in his Merlot will kick in, while simultaneously hoping it won’t kick in too soon, because Nigel is actually quite a good kisser. Josh reaches down and tries to get a closer look at my book. I slap his hand away, but not before he reads out loud, “Cressida’s heart raced as Nigel moved his hand along her stockinged thigh.” Josh cracks up. “What the heck are you reading?” My cheeks are burning. “Oh, be quiet.” Chuckling, Josh backs away. “I’ll leave you to Cressida and Noel then.” To his back, I call out, “For your information, it’s Nigel!

This series capitalized on the new Red scare of the early 1950s: 78 episodes were recorded, without any assistance from the FBI, which refused to cooperate. It didn’t matter: anti-Communist hysteria was at a peak, and by the end of 1952 I Was a Communist was scheduled on more than 600 stations—far more than if it had been on any network. The show was based on the book (and subsequent movie) by Matt Cvetic and purportedly told of his adventures as an undercover operative who joined the Communist Party to spy from within. Many of the stories contained double-edged conflicts: Cvetic constantly jockeyed for information, walking a tightrope among suspicious Party officials while unable to reveal his true mission even to his family, who shunned him. Communists were stereotyped, much as Hitler’s Nazis had been a few years before: they were seen as cold and humorless, with their single goal to enslave the world. Cvetic could never be sure who might be a Party spy. Dana Andrews gave it an air of Hollywood glamor, always closing with these words: “I was a Communist for the FBI. I walk alone.

We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only the least realistic of our desires, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, and not, when we came to live, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit. And if our bosses proved mean, why then we’d evoke their whole and genuine meanness afterward over vodka cranberries and small batch bourbons. And if our drinking companions proved to be sublime then we would stagger home at dawn over the Old City cobblestones, into hot showers and clean shirts, and press onward until dusk fell again. For the rest of the world, it seemed to us, had somewhat hastily concluded that it was the chief end of man to thank God it was Friday and pray that Netflix would never forsake them. Still we lived frantically, like hummingbirds; though our HR departments told us that our commitments were valuable and our feedback was appreciated, our raises would be held back another year. Like gnats we pestered Management— who didn’t know how to use the Internet, whose only use for us was to set up Facebook accounts so they could spy on their children, or to sync their iPhones to their Outlooks, or to explain what tweets were and more importantly, why— which even we didn’t know. Retire! we wanted to shout. We ha Get out of the way with your big thumbs and your senior moments and your nostalgia for 1976! We hated them; we wanted them to love us. We wanted to be them; we wanted to never, ever become them. Complexity, complexity, complexity! We said let our affairs be endless and convoluted; let our bank accounts be overdrawn and our benefits be reduced. Take our Social Security contributions and let it go bankrupt. We’d been bankrupt since we’d left home: we’d secure our own society. Retirement was an afterlife we didn’t believe in and that we expected yesterday. Instead of three meals a day, we’d drink coffee for breakfast and scavenge from empty conference rooms for lunch. We had plans for dinner. We’d go out and buy gummy pad thai and throat-scorching chicken vindaloo and bento boxes in chintzy, dark restaurants that were always about to go out of business. Those who were a little flush would cover those who were a little short, and we would promise them coffees in repayment. We still owed someone for a movie ticket last summer; they hadn’t forgotten. Complexity, complexity. In holiday seasons we gave each other spider plants in badly decoupaged pots and scarves we’d just learned how to knit and cuff links purchased with employee discounts. We followed the instructions on food and wine Web sites, but our soufflés sank and our baked bries burned and our basil ice creams froze solid. We called our mothers to get recipes for old favorites, but they never came out the same. We missed our families; we were sad to be rid of them. Why shouldn’t we live with such hurry and waste of life? We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to be starved before we were hungry. We were determined to decrypt our neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords and to never turn on the air-conditioning. We vowed to fall in love: headboard-clutching, desperate-texting, hearts-in-esophagi love. On the subways and at the park and on our fire escapes and in the break rooms, we turned pages, resolved to get to the ends of whatever we were reading. A couple of minutes were the day’s most valuable commodity. If only we could make more time, more money, more patience; have better sex, better coffee, boots that didn’t leak, umbrellas that didn’t involute at the slightest gust of wind. We were determined to make stupid bets. We were determined to be promoted or else to set the building on fire on our way out. We were determined to be out of our minds.

Many people believed that it was Julio Antonio Mella’s oversized ego that motivated him, but others said that he really was sincere and believed that he could bring about significant changes by his demands. There were also a number of female students known for being political radicals, who played an important part in shaping Julio’s life at that time. Rosario Guillauma (Charito) and Sarah Pascual were both close friends of Julio, as well as being fellow travelers. The overt communist cell at the University of Havana continued to grow dramatically under his leadership and many of the university students became active members of the party. Although, during the time he was at the university he was linked to women radicals and was married to Oliva Zaldivar Freyre. However, following his marriage, it was Tina Modotti, a movie star, model, notorious spy and renowned photographer who became the love of his life!

The episode felt like a dramatic scene out of a spy movie, complete with me hopping out of my black sedan, 9mm pistol tucked in my waistband.

The Director’s Chair is with Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, etc.), and Robert refers later to this quote from Francis: “Failure is not necessarily durable. Remember that the things that they fire you for when you are young are the same things that they give lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.” ROBERT: “Even if I didn’t sell Mariachi, I would have learned so much by doing that project. That was the idea—I’m there to learn. I’m not there to win; I’m there to learn, because then I’ll win, eventually. . . . “You’ve got to be able to look at your failures and know that there’s a key to success in every failure. If you look through the ashes long enough, you’ll find something. I’ll give you one. Quentin [Tarantino] asked me, ‘Do you want to do one of these short films called Four Rooms [where each director can create the film of their choosing, but it has to be limited to a single hotel room, and include New Year’s Eve and a bellhop]?’ and my hand went up right away, instinctively. . . . “The movie bombed. In the ashes of that failure, I can find at least two keys of success. On the set when I was doing it, I had cast Antonio Banderas as the dad and had this cool little Mexican as his son. They looked really close together. Then I found the best actress I could find, this little half-Asian girl. She was amazing. I needed an Asian mom. I really wanted them to look like a family. It’s New Year’s Eve, because [it] was dictated by the script, so they’re all dressed in tuxedos. I was looking at Antonio and his Asian wife and thinking, ‘Wow, they look like this really cool, international spy couple. What if they were spies, and these two little kids, who can barely tie their shoes, didn’t know they were spies?’ I thought of that on the set of Four Rooms. There are four of those [Spy Kids movies] now and a TV series coming. “So that’s one. The other one was, after [Four Rooms] failed, I thought, ‘I still love short films.’ Anthologies never work. We shouldn’t have had four stories; it should have been three stories because that’s probably three acts, and it should just be the same director instead of different directors because we didn’t know what each person was doing. I’m going to try it again. Why on earth would I try it again, if I knew they didn’t work? Because you figured something out when you’re doing it the first time, and [the second attempt] was Sin City.” TIM: “Amazing.

From the very earliest years after their creation, the CIA were recruiting assets within the highest levels of the film industry and using them to spy on Hollywood and to add and remove material from movie scripts.

From the very earliest years after their creation, the CIA were recruiting assets within the highest levels of the film industry and using them to spy on Hollywood and to add and remove material from movie scripts.

When clients want to add a bunch of confusion to their marketing message, I ask them to consider the ramifications of doing so if they were writing a screenplay. I mean, what if The Bourne Identity were a movie about a spy named Jason Bourne searching for his true identity but it also included scenes of Bourne trying to lose weight, marry a girl, pass the bar exam, win on Jeopardy, and adopt a cat? The audience would lose interest. When storytellers bombard people with too much information, the audience is forced to burn too many calories organizing the data. As a result, they daydream, walk out of the theater, or in the case of digital marketing, click to another site without placing an order. Why do so many brands create noise rather than music? It’s because they don’t realize they are creating noise. They actually think people are interested in the random information they’re doling out. This is why we need a filter. The essence of branding is to create simple, relevant messages we can repeat over and over so that we “brand” ourselves into the public consciousness.

Downstairs they exited the building into a small employee parking lot and headed straight for a sports car that looked like it belonged in a James Bond movie. It was sleek, with tinted windows and a matte black paint job. As she walked toward it, Sara wondered if it came fully loaded with secret weapons and an ejector seat. She was just about to run her fingers along the body when Mother called her. “Sorry, but that’s not ours,” he said. She turned to see that he and Sydney had stopped at an oldish Volvo station wagon that looked more mom than Bond.

Past an empty stretch of white wall with stone flowers inset below windows, he spied a pair of pop-eyed pimp-eyes as urgent as whore-eyes but roundly comical as the pimp twisted himself from side to side not to be sexy but to be urgent as if to say Jimmy this is your one and only chance to get the woman whose cunt will satisfy you for ever and ever, in sickness and in health, so help me God, but you have to come with me right now down this dark dark alley past the sign that says MOVIES and left by the trash cans following the luminescence of my white straw hat and white jeans and the whites of my eyes which I will continually turn back upon you to make sure that you stay with me all the way to the barred basement windows where your good fortune waits for you already saying oh Jimmy Jimmy but as soon as the man opened his mouth he became as monotonous as the intricacies of brick walls and the steel lattice-windows of bars, and Jimmy walked away.

According to Conquest, two days after Sofia was executed, on December 12, 1937, Stalin and his premier, Vyacheslav Molotov, approved 3,167 death sentences—and then went to watch a movie. Not all the executions were approved at such a high level; on a day in October, the secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov, and another official considered 551 names and sentenced every one of them to be shot.

Stalin and his premier, Vyacheslav Molotov, approved 3,167 death sentences—and then went to watch a movie.

Interesting Fact: During World War II Germans could spot American spies when they sat in this L Cross position. It became popular in the states after cowboys in Western movies used it, but had not caught on in Germany.

Who cut him?' Sam liked saying things like 'Who cut him?' It reminded him of being a kid and watching prison movies, which is probably why prisoners talked like that, too.

To some it may come as a surprise that the KGB considered extremist leftists, communists, and so forth, ill-suited to divulge the secrets the KGB wanted, or to gain the highest levels of government clearance. After the 1950s it was KGB policy to always try to recruit the highest level spies from circles that were unexpected; they specifically targeted Westerners from conservative ideological profiles. Bezmenov said: My KGB instructors specifically made a point. Never border with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. Try to get into wide circulation, established conservative media. The rich. Filthy rich movie makers. Intellectuals. So-called academic circles. Cynical egocentric people who can look into your eyes with an angelic expression and tell you a lie.9

Can I get you some coffee?” Nathan had seen enough spy movies to be leery of open beverages. He didn’t think the Russian would drug him, but he wasn’t betting his life on it.

was being attacked by a flock of harpies that made the playground scene in The Birds look like a Disney movie.

I’m not a spy. I’m not a cop. All I know is from watching movies and I’m pretty sure if my life depends on doing parkour across rooftops,

the aftermath of Watergate, the Senate’s Church Committee discovered five administrations’ worth of spy agency malfeasance, including the revelation that the CIA had tested mind-altering drugs on American citizens without their knowledge, a veritable Bay of Guinea Pigs sparked by fears during the Korean War that Chinese and Soviet scientists were brainwashing captured American soldiers. One former CIA agent testified that the illicit doping continued long after it was clear there were no mind-control chemicals, because the movie version of The Manchurian Candidate came out, and it “made something impossible look plausible.” Michael and I were children of a time when a “thought experiment” meant something more than Einstein imagining a beam of light on a trolley. A movie about a foreign conspiracy to brainwash Americans and destroy the country had served as

Jesus. If a spy movie and old Western had a lovechild, it would look like this,” I say as I make my way down the steps from the loft. They’re all huddled around the kitchen island looking at something on a computer screen. At first, I can barely make him out through the sea of denim jackets and cowboy hats, but Gage stands slightly taller and darker than the rest.

IAM A SPY, a sleeper, a spook, a man of two faces. Perhaps not surprisingly, I am also a man of two minds. I am not some misunderstood mutant from a comic book or a horror movie, although some have treated me as such. I am simply able to see any issue from both sides.

Oh, no. This is what happens in horror movies and then everyone dies," Wolfgang emphasized. The four of us gave him a look and he shrugged. "Tell me one horror movie where they split up and actually all come out alive." "It's a horror movie,

All the experts proved what we’ve all known all along. That they are full of shit. They all got it so wrong they needed cover and when they saw something, no matter how asinine, it became gospel to cover their abject failure. Still, the left wouldn’t feel sorry for itself for long. First it picked up the Russian spy story and started pushing it to every devastated reporter who would listen. Then it did everything it had told us the Trump supporters would do if Hillary won. Think about it. For weeks leading up to the election, we had been hearing about all the horrible things Donald Trump would force his supporters to do if he lost. DJT wouldn’t accept the defeat they were all so sure was coming. The editorial boards at the New York Times and the Washington Post both ran many articles warning us about the chaos that was about to ensue. According to popular opinion, Trump supporters were going to riot in the streets, refuse to accept the results of the election, and begin some kind of underground coup against the duly elected president, Hillary Clinton. They would start a second civil war. The streets would become absolute anarchy. And when things didn’t go the way the Democrats had wanted them to go, what happened? Let’s see. They held riots in the streets. (Check.) They refused to accept the results of the election, cooking up one of the strangest spy-movie stories I’ve ever heard in order to maintain their collective delusion. (Check.) Then they formed an underground group of online keyboard warriors called “the Resistance,” dedicated to taking down my father one stupid hashtag at a time. Prominent journalists, liberal activists, and actors have all identified themselves as proud members of “the Resistance” on Twitter. When I’m attacked by an outraged mob online, their voices are usually among the loudest. (And Check.)

After the show Humphrey Barclay, a highly talented Harrovian Head Boy who could act, direct, and draw cartoons, introduced me to John Cleese, a very tall man with black hair and piercing dark eyes. They were very complimentary and encouraged me to audition for the Footlights. I had never heard of this University Revue Club, founded in 1883 to perform sketches and comedy shows, but it seemed like a fun thing to do, and a month later Jonathan Lynn and I were voted in by the Committee, after performing to a packed crowd of comedy buffs in the Footlights’ Club Room. Jonathan, a talented actor, writer, and jazz drummer, would go on to direct Pass the Butler, my first play in the West End, and also write and direct Nuns on the Run, a movie with me and Robbie Coltrane. The audition sketch I had written for us played surprisingly well and, strange details, in the front row, lounging on a sofa, laughing with some Senior Fellows, was the author Kingsley Amis, next to the brother of the soon-to-be-infamous Guy Burgess, who would shortly flee the country, outed as perhaps the most flamboyant of all the Cambridge spies—for whenever he was outrageously drunk in Washington, which was every night, he would announce loudly to everybody that he was a KGB spy. Nobody believed him

As the cops say in the movies, I had motive, means, and opportunity

A construct that seemed more out of a spy movie or thriller novel, too farfetched to ever happen.

Film was a spy, moving surreptitiously in other worlds and sending back reports, mesmerizing viewers with the illusion of authenticity. And if the characters were true, then they ought to be so in the real world, too.

Stuart Gibbs is the author of Belly Up, Poached, Spy School, Spy Camp, Evil Spy School, and Space Case. He has also written the screenplays for movies like See Spot Run and Repli-Kate, worked on a whole bunch of animated films, developed TV shows for Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, ABC, and Fox, and researched capybaras (the world’s largest rodents.). He lives with his wife and children in Los Angeles.

Maybe it wasn’t her,” Mike suggested. “It was only someone pretending to be her. Like wearing one of those incredibly lifelike masks that they have in the Mission: Impossible movies.” “We don’t have masks like that in real life,” Jawa told him. “Really?” Mike asked, sounding disappointed. “Why not?” “Because they’re impossible to make,” Zoe said. “The CIA’s been trying for years, and the closest they’ve gotten still makes you look like someone whose face is melting off their head. Which is great if you need to blend in with a bunch of zombies, but not very useful otherwise.” Chip looked to Mike. “No one here has ever told you those Mission: Impossible masks don’t really exist?” “Oh, plenty of people have,” Mike said. “But I thought maybe everyone was just keeping them a secret.

My parents had always told me that I should treat older women with kindness and respect—though I suppose they had never suspected that I would ever be confronting an evil woman in charge of a criminal organization who had killers poised outside our house. Therefore, I might not have treated Ms. E with kindness or respect, and I might have possibly punched her in the face a few times. Not that she treated me with much kindness or respect either. Fistfights in real life are rarely as cool as the ones you see in the movies. Instead, there’s a lot of writhing around on the floor, trying to get in a good shot at the other person and usually failing. At one point, Ms. E locked both of her pantyhosed legs around my head for a brief moment—which was an experience I would prefer to never think of again—but I then drove my knee into some part of her that made her yelp in pain, and I wriggled away.

She’d practically been preparing for it since birth: Spying was her family business. Most of her ancestors had been spies, going all the way back to Nathan Hale in the Revolutionary War. Her grandfather Cyrus Hale was one of the best there’d ever been, and he’d taught Erica almost everything he knew. On the other hand, I came from a long line of grocers. I was only thirteen, and until seven months earlier, my entire espionage experience had consisted of watching James Bond movies.

Bezmenov’s famous quote about how the KGB instructed him offers a look at how conservatives were preferred recruits for spies: “Try to get into established conservative media with a large circulation, reach filthy rich movie makers, intellectuals, so-called academic circles, cynical egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people, people who lack moral principles who are either too greedy or suffer from self-importance. They feel they matter a lot. These are the people the KGB wanted to recruit.” The Russian intelligence officers were wary of liberals, socialists, and, worst of all, other communists. Bezmenov said that idealistically minded leftists were not to be recruited or used because “when they become disillusioned, they become your worst enemies.

Some stories don’t make movies. I mean superheroes, spies, serial killers… sure. But there’s some feelings you can’t put on a screen.

Even before the first Soviet tanks crossed into Afghanistan in 1979, a movement of Islamists had sprung up nationwide in opposition to the Communist state. They were, at first, city-bound intellectuals, university students and professors with limited countryside appeal. But under unrelenting Soviet brutality they began to forge alliances with rural tribal leaders and clerics. The resulting Islamist insurgents—the mujahedeen—became proxies in a Cold War battle, with the Soviet Union on one side and the United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia on the other. As the Soviets propped up the Afghan government, the CIA and other intelligence agencies funneled millions of dollars in aid to the mujahedeen, along with crate after crate of weaponry. In the process, traditional hierarchies came radically undone. When the Communists killed hundreds of tribal leaders and landlords, young men of more humble backgrounds used CIA money and arms to form a new warrior elite in their place. In the West, we would call such men “warlords.” In Afghanistan they are usually labeled “commanders.” Whatever the term, they represented a phenomenon previously unknown in Afghan history. Now, each valley and district had its own mujahedeen commanders, all fighting to free the country from Soviet rule but ultimately subservient to the CIA’s guns and money. The war revolutionized the very core of rural culture. With Afghan schools destroyed, millions of boys were instead educated across the border in Pakistani madrassas, or religious seminaries, where they were fed an extreme, violence-laden version of Islam. Looking to keep the war fueled, Washington—where the prevailing ethos was to bleed the Russians until the last Afghan—financed textbooks for schoolchildren in refugee camps festooned with illustrations of Kalashnikovs, swords, and overturned tanks. One edition declared: Jihad is a kind of war that Muslims fight in the name of God to free Muslims.… If infidels invade, jihad is the obligation of every Muslim. An American text designed to teach children Farsi: Tey [is for] Tofang (rifle); Javed obtains rifles for the mujahedeen Jeem [is for] Jihad; Jihad is an obligation. My mom went to the jihad. The cult of martyrdom, the veneration of jihad, the casting of music and cinema as sinful—once heard only from the pulpits of a few zealots—now became the common vocabulary of resistance nationwide. The US-backed mujahedeen branded those supporting the Communist government, or even simply refusing to pick sides, as “infidels,” and justified the killing of civilians by labeling them apostates. They waged assassination campaigns against professors and civil servants, bombed movie theaters, and kidnapped humanitarian workers. They sabotaged basic infrastructure and even razed schools and clinics. With foreign backing, the Afghan resistance eventually proved too much for the Russians. The last Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, leaving a battered nation, a tottering government that was Communist in name only, and a countryside in the sway of the commanders. For three long years following the withdrawal, the CIA kept the weapons and money flowing to the mujahedeen, while working to block any peace deal between them and the Soviet-funded government. The CIA and Pakistan’s spy agency pushed the rebels to shell Afghan cities still under government control, including a major assault on the eastern city of Jalalabad that flattened whole neighborhoods. As long as Soviet patronage continued though, the government withstood the onslaught. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, however, Moscow and Washington agreed to cease all aid to their respective proxies. Within months, the Afghan government crumbled. The question of who would fill the vacuum, who would build a new state, has not been fully resolved to this day.

The story describing the event circled the globe, thanks to the Associated Press, and brought its own surprise benefit. Hollywood took notice, and The Wolves at the Door was optioned for a movie. Only preliminary work has begun on the film, but I have every confidence that Virginia’s dedication to freedom will soon appear on the silver screen.

Throughout the war there were widespread rumours of Pakistan’s Hindus and Christians operating as spies or facilitators for the invading army. In some instances, Muslim neighbours engaged in vigilante violence against their non-Muslim compatriots. Even after the war was over, Hindus were described in movies, television plays and patriotic songs as enemies of Islam and Pakistan, while Christians were portrayed as instruments of Western imperialists.

What happens when you combine a love of Wizard of Oz, Nora Ephron, James Bond movies, and the desire for true faith? You embark on an unforgettable 1980 journey to magical Mackinac Island.

Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he has created?

On the other hand, I came from a long line of grocers. I was only thirteen, and until seven months earlier, my entire espionage experience had consisted of watching James Bond movies.