Alex Kerns

“There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Exactly,” he says. “And look, Gregory, it’s all very well planning what you will do in six months, what you will do in a year, but it’s no good at all if you don’t have a plan for tomorrow.”
― Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

“Some problems—take Ireland—were insoluble, but you would never get the Americans to admit anything was insoluble.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People