Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (The Karla Trilogy, #1)

by John Le Carré

“There are always a dozen reasons for doing nothing,” Ann liked to say—it was a favourite apologia, indeed, for many of her misdemeanours—“There is only one reason for doing something. And that’s because you want to.”

Sitting is an eloquent business; any actor will tell you that. We sit according to our natures. We sprawl and straddle, we rest like boxers between rounds, we fidget, perch, cross and uncross our legs, lose patience, lose endurance.

here in London, a house, paid for by the Treasury, all sixty thousand pounds of it; and often coveted, no doubt, by the many luckless tax-payers who daily passed it by, confident they could never afford it and not knowing that they had already paid for it.

there were no fewer than five, all men, spread down the tiny platform with their hands in their pockets, pretending to chat to one another and making damn fools of themselves. “If there’s one thing that distinguishes a good watcher from a bad one,” said Jim, “it’s the gentle art of doing damn all convincingly.”

Headmasters, in his opinion, should be above the menial tasks; they should keep their minds clear for policy and leadership.

he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion;