When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

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.

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.

Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.