I love continuity. I was a continuity nerd growing up. I loved buying a comic in the middle of something and loved digging for back issues or going forward and trying to figure it all out.

My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'

When I talk about the C.I.A. stuff, I feel guilt because I left. I really believed in that job, and my colleagues are still there. But I have kids now.

I don't believe in writing for goals, or else I'd write essays.

We are not living in the same world we were immediately after the Cold War, when there seemed to be a greater belief in the universality of human rights and there was enough prosperity to make us question why we had not committed more resources to upholding the values we claimed to hold most dear.

For some years I have spent my time on exactly these questions - both in thinking about ways to prevent war, and in thinking about how to fight, survive, and terminate a war, should it occur.

What my job is, is to get on with getting the process of democratic politics, back on the road, entrenching the peace settlement, and I ask you to judge me on my record.

It's funny to see a film in Spain with a lot of violence because we don't have a lot of violence. Well, of course, we have violence, some murders, some terrorism and a lot of things. We have suffered a dictatorship, and we talk about the civil war constantly.