Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.

No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.

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

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

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.

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.