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

by John Le Carré

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.

Few men can resist expressing their appetites when they are making a fantasy about themselves.”

Survival, as Jim Prideaux liked to recall, is an infinite capacity for suspicion.

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

There are moments that are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.