I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

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

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

Elections are a Western jerk-off.

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.

Love means having something to betray.