On the CIA: “I write often about the CIA and I write about it with some sympathy. I do feel we need a strong intelligence service. The stronger our intelligence service, the less likely we are to get into the kinds of military conflicts that can really hurt the country. … The people who work at the CIA would like the world to understand, to the extent possible, what the hell they do every day.”
On spy novels: “Spy novels that we usually read are so completely unrealistic. The real work isn’t that glamorous. It’s a lot like journalism. It’s a lot of sitting around, waiting. It’s a lot of preparation. It’s the moment of human interaction between one person and the other when you gain that person’s trust and you get that person to tell you things that, initially, he probably wasn’t going to tell you. If I understand the intelligence business at all, it’s because it’s so similar to my business of journalism.”
On column writing: “When people say, ‘I don’t know which way you vote,’ that pleases me. I don’t want people to look at my byline and instantly know what I’m going to say. I want them to look at my byline and say, ‘Well he’s going to think about it, he’s going to think it through.’ That infuriates some people, some people find that unforgivable, but that’s the way I like to do it.”
On ‘Body of Lies’ becoming a movie: “It was unbelievably cool, are you kidding? This is the first thing that I’ve done in my life that my three daughters take seriously. A newspaper column doesn’t cut it. But they loved this.”
On teaching Leonardo DiCaprio to walk: “DiCaprio came to this house and was in our family room and he wanted to know how does [the character] Roger Ferris walk. That never would have occurred to me, but of course if you’re an actor and you have to occupy space, that’s the first thing you think about. How does this person fill up the space?” Ignatius thought DiCaprio’s first attempt was too “loose-gated,” too American. “He immediately walked back across the room and said, ‘You mean like this?’ and he did another version of Roger’s walk. It was hypnotizing for me. … It was more fun than I can describe to see it happen.”
