Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.

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.

George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge

Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?