Valerie Plame

“These are issues we've been grappling with since the Constitution was written: how you hold your government to account for its words and deeds. It's all about power and the abuse of power.”

“I really believe the nexus of terrorism and nuclear weapons is the world's most ominous threat.”

“The great thing about fiction is you can fix things and make things better.”

“It's lonely. That's why, in many ways, the CIA is the world's biggest dating agency, I think. I imagine it's much like two actors that get married because they understand that universe. You know, I'm pretty sure the agency's divorce rate is rather high.”

“I don't care if you are for having Mexico pay for the border wall, or you want to repeal and replace Obamacare, or if you want women to have complete access to reproductive rights - I don't care. The fact is, if you don't get the nuclear issue right, none of the other ones matter.”

“I think feeling bitter or angry is really useless.”

“In many, many parts of the world, being a female, you're really just wallpaper. If you take care to blend in, no one would think in a thousand years that you were doing anything suspicious.”

“I didn't appreciate how special and sometimes strange my CIA world was - until it suddenly and spectacularly ended in a newspaper column.”

“For me, I thought I had the best job in the world.”

“My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.”

“I think, honestly, my largest concern, there are a lot of unbalanced people out there, and all of a sudden, I'm the CIA poster girl, and our home in Washington, the front door was about 20 feet from the street. I went to the agency at a certain point and asked for security on a residence.”

“The truth is, as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not safe.”

“I believe in much more diplomacy, not less.”

“Joe and I are still very aware of the fact that we live in a country where he criticised the government and lived another day. That trumps all. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the other forms of government. You constantly have to fight for it; you have to keep your government honest.”

“Our critics would love nothing more for us to go away and just be quiet. And we won't give them that satisfaction. We have young children that, one day, when they understand more of what's happened and what's transpired, we wanna be able to say to them, you know, we did our best. And we told the truth.”

“I first learned the power of trust in the CIA. There is no question that when I joined the Agency as a covert operations officer, it was still run along the 'old boys' network' model.”

“To my knowledge, no one has died from a cyberattack... but there is a gray area between peace and war.”

“Even those that hate Hillary admit she is a work horse and not a show horse. She gets down into the nuts and bolts and figures out, 'What's the policy, what's the substance?'”

“It's some weird idea to think that you've always got to say everything is great and perfect.”

“Looking back at my career, I wish I knew then what I know now... that gender bias is built into the system, and it's unconscious in many ways. I wish I had the maturity and courage to have pushed back more. I was always trying to be a 'good girl' and play by the rules.”