People are very secretive - secret even from themselves.

To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.

Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

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 centre of things.