Some people are agents from birth, Monsignors -- he told them -- appointed to the work by the period of history, the place, and their own natural dispositions. In their cases, it was simply a question...
She's become a Russian again, he thought. When something works, she's grateful. When it doesn't work, it's life.
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.
I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.
This is a war, Lemas replied. It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at a...
They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world.
He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England; it was the caring about little things - the faith in ordinary life; th...
Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other...
Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. ...when had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom?
Percebeu então o que Liz lhe tinha dado, aquilo que teria de procurar readquirir se alguma vez regressasse a Inglaterra: era o interesse pelas pequenas coisas, a fé na vida comum, a simplicidade que f...
George, you won,' said Guillam, as they walked slowly towards the car.'Did I?' said Smiley. 'Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did.
By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed. Then we have a war. This war.
'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion.
I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British...
Every man has his personal devil waiting for him somewhere.
Afterwards Smiley always thought of that interview as a fan dance; a calculated progression of disclosures, each revealing different parts of a mysterious entity. Finally Steed-Asprey, who seemed to b...
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and ol...
The fact you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.