Top Espionage Quotes

Their conversation ceased abruptly with the entry of an oddly-shaped man whose body resembled a certain vegetable. He was a thickset fellow with calloused and jaundiced skin and a patch of brown hair,...

Never patronize your readers. That means don't talk down to them.

Espionage Definition

(n.) The practice or employment of spies; the practice of watching the words and conduct of others, to make discoveries, as spies or secret emissaries; secret watching.

Li, a willowy manboy with a shock of black hair atop a mouthful of bad teeth was the brother-in-law he had introduced to industrial espionage several years back. Rong often regretted that.

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

Being shaken to death by a Hawaiian tourist look-alike was not how Arena imagined her death.

Playing pool with Korean officials one evening in the Koryo Hotel, which has become the nightspot for foreign businessmen and an increasing number of diplomats (to say nothing of the burgeoning number...

Nothing can stop an enemy from picking wireless messages out of the free air - and nothing did.

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposin...

Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions them...

[Blinker] Hall, operating on the quaint theory that the Navy might be needed for battle and that whatever increased the ship's efficiency was a criterion for change, had continued trampling on the toe...

It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.

Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.

Being a spy was something like standing on the south shore fending off a hurricane with a $2 poncho and an umbrella.

Cheating was a concept both foreign and integral to the fighting of wars.

Informants can be helpful, but they are never infallible. All tools can break, or be turned into weapons.

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the ce...

Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

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...