Quotes by Spies

Gossip till the cows come home.
John le Carré
May be you find out I could be useful getting people out of camps and prisons in Germany - just before they got shot. I should love to do it and I like to jump out of a plane even every day.
Christine Granville
the drama below and the drama above could easily collide at any moment
Ana Chapman
He has the gift of quiet.
John le Carré
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.
Sir Walter Raleigh
Do what thy manhood bids thee do.
Sir Richard Burton
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Nathan Hale
Do what thy manhood bids thee do.
Sir Richard Burton
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.
Sir Walter Raleigh
I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.
Nathan Hale
To dream in doctrines, how tidy!
John le Carré
Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.
John le Carré
She had the experience to suffer with discretion.
John le Carré
Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a principle of challenge and response. Where there was softness, he would advance; where he found resistance, retreat. Having himself no particular opinions or tastes he relied upon whatever conformed with those of his companion. He was as ready to drink tea at Fortnum's as beer at the Prospect of Whitby; he would listen to military music in St. James's Park or jazz in Compton Street cellar; his voice would tremble with sympathy when he spoke of Sharpeville, or with indignation at the growth of Britain's colored population. To Leamas this observably passive role was repellent; it brought out the bully in him, so that he would lead the other gently into a position where he was committed, and then himself withdraw, so that Ashe was constantly scampering back from some cul-de-sac into which Leamas had enticed him.
John le Carré
Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.
John le Carré
Liberty? Independence? Are they to remain only words? Gentlemen, let us make them fighting words!
Nathan Hale
And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackness, that his life has consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it.
John le Carré
They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.
John le Carré
Don't give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don't give way on the ideology, they won't trust that. They want to deal with a man they've bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-cock convert.
John le Carré
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
John le Carré
But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing.
John le Carré
society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation.
John le Carré
We've had enough." He took back the report and jammed it under his arm. "We've had a bellyful, in fact.""And like everyone who's had enough," said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, "he wants more.
John le Carré
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carré
Afterwards Smiley always thought of that interview as a fan dance; a calculated progression of disclosures, each revealing different parts of a mysterious entity. Finally Steed-Asprey, who seemed to be Chairman, removed the last veil, and the truth stood before him in all its dazzling nakedness. He was being offered a post in what, for want of a better name, Steed-Asprey blushingly described as the Secret Service.
John le Carré
one of those world builders who do othing but destroy,
John le Carré
You should have died when I killed you.
John le Carré
All men are born free: just not for long.
John le Carré
Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother’s shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overcoat like a pony blanket made their way to a sports car parked under the beech trees. For a moment she really thought there must be something wrong with the fat one, he followed so slowly and so painfully. Then, seeing the handsome man hold the car door for him, he seemed to wake, and hurried forward with a lumpy skip. Unaccountably, this gesture upset her afresh. A storm of sorrow seized her and her mother could not console her.
John le Carré
When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.
John le Carré
The kernel of truth sank into the fertile soil of [her] imagination, possibilities for a happy resolution suggesting themselves in vague flashes of potential and promise...
Ana Chapman
The two stared together into a future that held as much pain as promise, as much sorrow as sunshine...
Ana Chapman
A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a matter of experience, a professional expertise. It is a facility most of us can acquire. But while a confidence trickster, a play actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief. For him, deception is first a matter of self defense. He must protect himself not only from without, but from within, and against the most natural of impulses. Though he earn a fortune, his role may forbid him the purchase of a razor. Though he be erudite, it can befall him to mumble nothing but banalities. Though he be an affectionate husband and father, he must within all circumstances without himself from those with whom he should naturally confide. Aware of the overwhelming temptations which assail a man permanently isolated in his deceit, Limas resorted to the course which armed him best. Even when he was alone, he compelled himself to live with the personality he had assumed. It is said that Balzac on his deathbed inquired anxiously after the health and prosperity of characters he had created. Similarly, Limas, without relinquishing the power of invention, identified himself with what he had invented. The qualities he had exhibited to Fiedler: the restless uncertainty, the protective arrogance concealing shame were not approximations, but extensions of qualities he actually possessed. Hence, also, the slight dragging of the feet, the aspect of personal neglect, the indifference to food, and an increasing reliance on alcohol and tobacco. When alone, he remained faithful to these habits. He would even exaggerate them a little, mumbling to himself about the iniquities of his service. Only very rarely, as now, going to bed that evening, did he allow himself the dangerous luxury of admitting the great lie that he lived.
John le Carré
I wish I could have healed your misery, quenched your sorrow.
Ana Chapman
There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would say that, as with many English, the moment is somewhat delayed.
John le Carré
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous
John le Carré
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
John le Carré
The vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.
John le Carré
God’s justice in the one, and his goodness in the other, is exercised for evermore, as the everlasting subjects of his reward and punishment.
Sir Walter Raleigh
A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
John le Carré
Vice may triumph for a time, crime may flaunt its victories in the face of honest toilers, but in the end the law will follow the wrong-doer to a bitter fate, and dishonor and punishment will be the portion of those who sin.
Allan Pinkerton
Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.
John le Carré
He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man
John le Carré
Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.
John le Carré
He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.
John le Carré
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
John le Carré
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.
John le Carré
I don't break down," she announced. "Got it?"He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed of himself, but somehow he was still holding her wrist."I never break down. I'm a lawyer.
John le Carré
... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ...
John le Carré
You can make it if you try. Don't give up or quit the fight. If you believe, you will see, you can do it.
Robert Karl Hanson
If there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epitaph, thought Barley. 'There was no sea-gull, so he aborted.
John le Carré
We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?
John le Carré
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.
John le Carré
Put it this way, George,” he suggested, when he had savoured the night air for a moment. “You traveling on business, or for pleasure in this thing? Which is it?Smiley’s reply was also slow in coming, and as indirect: “I was never conscious of pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps I mean: of the distinction.
John le Carré
She's become a Russian again, he thought. When something works, she's grateful. When it doesn't work, it's life.
John le Carré
Some people are agents from birth, Monsignors -- he told them -- appointed to the work by the period of history, the place, and their own natural dispositions. In their cases, it was simply a question of who got to them first, Your Eminences: 'Whether it's us, whether it's the opposition, or whether it's the bloody missionaries.
John le Carré
He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.
John le Carré
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
John le Carré
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.
John le Carré
Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.
John le Carré