Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

by John Le Carré

“To possess another language is to possess another soul.” A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth.

‘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.’ Or have to? Ann would furiously deny it: coercion, she would say, is just another word for doing what you want; or for not doing what you are afraid of.

‘And like everyone who’s had enough,’ said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, ‘he wants more.’

He read it once, then again more slowly. The Treasury had sanctioned sixty thousand pounds for the freehold and another ten for furniture and fittings.

Uncle Tom Cobley and All.

God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow. He could have sung out loud: God is in his Heaven and I can still fly.

‘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.

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

‘So Karla is fireproof?’ Guillam asked finally. ‘He can’t be bought and he can’t be beaten?’

‘Look: I’m not quite there myself, Peter,’ Smiley said quietly. ‘But nearly I am. Karla’s pulled the Circus inside out; that much I understand, so do you. But there’s a last clever knot, and I can’t undo it. Though I mean to. And if you want a sermon, Karla is not fireproof because he’s a fanatic. And one day, if I have anything to do with it, that lack of moderation will be his downfall.’

But Roach had run out of words. He had no memory any more, no sense of size or perspective; his faculty of selection in the adult world had gone. Big men, small men, old, young, crooked, straight, they were a single army of indistinguishable dangers. To say no to Jim was more than he could bear: to say yes was to shoulder the whole awful responsibility of disappointing him.

I told him, George. “Go to hell. Go to bloody hell. If you had one Bill Haydon in your damned outfit, you could call it set and match.” I said to him: “Christ Almighty,” I said, “what are you running over here? A service or the bloody Salvation Army?” ’

Learn the facts, Steed-Asprey used to say, then try on the stories like clothes.

It was still dark when the Irish ferry sailed. There were soldiers and police everywhere: this war, the last, the one before. A fierce wind was blowing off the sea and the going looked rough.

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

Between them, the buildings were gimcrack, cheaply fitted out with bits of empire: a Roman bank, a theatre like a vast desecrated mosque.

Her manner, from the moment he arrived, had a deep and lonely stillness; she showed him round the house like a châtelaine whose guests had long since died.

His mood was subdued, even a little glum. Like an actor he had a sense of approaching anti-climax before the curtain went up, a sense of great things dwindling to a small, mean end; as death itself seemed small and mean to him after the struggles of his life.

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

So he waited in the scullery, feeling absurd in his stockinged feet, polishing his spectacles because the heat of his face kept misting them.

Then the slam of the door, the explosive anti-climax: if you can hear it, it’s not for you.

it was the treason, not the man, that belonged to the public domain.

Thus Smiley felt not only disgust; but, despite all that the moment meant to him, a surge of resentment against the institutions he was supposed to be protecting: ‘The social contract cuts both ways, you know,’ said Lacon.

all of them had tacitly shared that unexpressed half-knowledge which like an illness they hoped would go away if it was never owned to, never diagnosed.

More, far more. Now that he saw, he knew. Haydon was more than his model, he was his inspiration, the torch-bearer of a certain kind of antiquated romanticism, a notion of English calling which – for the very reason that it was vague and understated and elusive – had made sense of Guillam’s life till now. In that moment, Guillam felt not merely betrayed; but orphaned.

His suspicions, his resentments for so long turned outwards on the real world – on his women, his attempted loves – now swung upon the Circus and the failed magic which had formed his faith.

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

Finally, to the general relief, a windowless van arrived from the Nursery and two men got out whom Guillam had never seen before, one tall and limping, the other doughy and ginger-haired. With a shudder he realised they were inquisitors.