Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of English calling which - for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive - had made sense...
There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would say that, as with many English, the moment is somewhat delayed.
Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resista...
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed...
Wives? she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, None active, as if wives were volcanoe...
Society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation.
Spying is waiting.
We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time...
When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.
Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.
It comforted the great to deal with it and they knew, a man who could reduce any color to grey.
He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.
I don't break down, she announced. Got it?He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed of himself, but somehow he was still holding her wrist.I never break down. I'm a lawyer.
All men are born free: just not for long.
The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.
He appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes.
Yes, dear Father. But has it ever occurred to you that by [your feelings] you destroy them? How many times can we say sorry before we don't feel sorry anymore?
To dream in doctrines, how tidy!
There's no way out, he announced with satisfaction, and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and th...