The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.

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

Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. But now your own side is going to shoot you. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?

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

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.