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

You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.

In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.

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.

Let's die of it before we're too old.

Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

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