Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.

Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

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

The religious cant that will send American troops into battle is perhaps the most sickening aspect of this surreal war-to-be. Bush has an arm-lock on God. And God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America's Middle Eastern policy, and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is a) anti-Semitic, b) anti-American, c) with the enemy, and d) a terrorist.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.