Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

by John Le Carré

‘An artist is a bloke who can hold two fundamentally opposing views and still function: who dreamed that one up?’

I rather like Karla’s description of committees don’t you? Is it Chinese? A committee is an animal with four back legs.

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

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

‘But you had this one price: Ann. The last illusion of the illusionless man. He reckoned that if I was known to be Ann’s lover around the place you wouldn’t see me very straight when it came to other things.’