The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

by John Le Carré

It is said a dog lives as long as its teeth;

‘It’s so dry, that’s the trouble,’ Control continued. ‘Beat the cold and you parch the atmosphere. Just as dangerous.’

the same apologetic adherence to a code of behaviour which he pretended to find ridiculous.

perhaps his decline scared them in the same way as we are scared by cripples, beggars and invalids because we fear we could ourselves become them;

pavingstones turn to lakes of light in the evening rain, and the traffic shuffles despondently through wet streets.

You’re a fanatic, Alec. I know you are, but I don’t know what about. You’re a fanatic who doesn’t want to convert people, and that’s a dangerous thing.

She was thankful for the biting cold of the street and for the dark which hid her tears.

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.

‘It isn’t a question of moralities. He is like the surgeon who has grown tired of blood. He is content that others should operate.’

‘Pussywillow Club. Members Only.’ On either side of the door were photographs of girls, and pinned across each was a thin, hand-printed strip of paper which read, ‘Nature Study. Members only.’

Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates among people who have been up since dawn – of superiority almost, derived from the common experience of having seen the night disappear and the morning come.

a man seemingly without ambition for himself but remorseless in the destruction of others.

“half a million liquidated is a statistic, and one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy”.

“Either I shall faint or I shall grow to bear the pain, nature will see to that” and the pain just increases like a violinist going up the E string. You think it can’t get any higher and it does – the pain’s like that, it rises and rises, and all that nature does is bring you on from note to note like a deaf child being taught to hear.

it was like mid-week evensong when she used to go to church – the same dutiful little group of lost faces, the same fussy self-consciousness, the same feeling of a great idea in the hands of little people.

you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function.

‘The English! The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food –

Once she had cried out, and there had been no echo, nothing. Just the memory of her own voice. She had visualised the sound breaking against the solid darkness like a fist against a rock. She had moved her hands about her as she sat on the bed, and it seemed to her that the darkness made them heavy, as if she were groping in the water.

What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.