I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.

Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.

There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.