It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.

The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.

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

Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

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