Smiley's People Quotes

“[Smiley contemplates graffiti:]'Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.' The assertion caused him a moment's indecision. 'Oh, but society does,' he wanted to reply; 'society is an association of minorities.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“In Lacon's world, direct questions were the height of bad taste, but direct answers were worse.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other's frotiers, we are the no-men of this no-man's land.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“George, you won,' said Guillam, as they walked slowly towards the car.

'Did I?' said Smiley. 'Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“Why and earth should an unshaven young man in a track suit be carrying a basket of oranges and yesterday's newspaper? The whole boat must of noticed him!”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“He read as far into his own past as into Karla’s, and sometimes it seemed to him that the one life was merely the complement to the other; that they were causes of the same incurable malady.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“He was in late age, yet his tradecraft had never been better; for the first time in his career, he held the advantage over his old adversary.

On the other hand, that adversary had acquired a human face of disconcerting clarity. It was no brute whom Smiley was pursuing with such mastery, no unqualified fanatic after all, no automaton. It was a man; and one whose downfall, if Smiley chose to bring it about, would be caused by nothing more sinister than excessive love, a weakness with which Smiley himself, from his own tangled life, was eminently familiar.”
― John Le Carre, Smiley's People

“I always remember the words of a Berlin comedian when, against all prediction, the Berlin Wall did finally come down. “The right side lost but the wrong side won.” He meant, I suppose, that having defeated Communism, we are left with the problem of how to tackle our own greed, and our indifference to human suffering in the world outside our own.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.” The assertion caused him a moment’s indecision. “Oh, but society does,” he wanted to reply; “society is an association of minorities.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“And he added, in a phrase which found a modest place in Circus folklore—“George has got too many heads under his hat.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“You just happened to put your hand to your face and find it damp and you wondered what the hell Christ bothered to die for, if He ever died at all.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“Because he was good!’ Smiley snapped, and there was a startled silence everywhere, while he recovered himself. ‘Vladimir’s father was an Estonian and a passionate Bolshevik, Oliver,’ he resumed in a calmer voice. ‘A professional man, a lawyer. Stalin rewarded his loyalty by murdering him in the purges. Vladimir was born Voldemar but he even changed his name to Vladimir out of allegiance to Moscow and the Revolution. He still wanted to believe, despite what they had done to his father. He joined the Red Army and by God’s grace missed being purged as well. The war promoted him, he fought like a lion, and when it was over, he waited for the great Russian liberalisation that he had been dreaming of, and the freeing of his own people. It never came. Instead, he witnessed the ruthless repression of his homeland by the government he had served. Scores of thousands of his fellow Estonians went to the camps, several of his own relatives among them.’ Lacon opened his mouth to interrupt, but wisely closed it. ‘The lucky ones escaped to Sweden and Germany. We’re talking of a population of a million sober, hard-working people, cut to bits. One night, in despair, he offered us his services. Us, the British. In Moscow. For three years after that he spied for us from the very heart of the capital. Risked everything for us, every day.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“George, this is history," Lacon protested weakly. "This is not today.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.”
― John le Carré, Smiley's People

“He felt Toby Esterhase fling his arms round his shoulders, and saw that his eyes were filled with tears. “George,” he began. “All your life. Fantastic!” Then something in Smiley’s stiffness made Toby pull away, and Smiley himself stepped quickly out of the halo, passing very close to Ann’s lighter on his way. It lay at the halo’s very edge, tilted slightly, glinting like fool’s gold on the cobble. He thought of picking it up, but somehow there seemed no point and no one else appeared to have seen it. Someone was shaking his hand, someone else was clapping him on the shoulder. Toby quietly restrained them. “Take care, George,” Toby said. “Go well, hear me?”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“On Karla has descended the curse of Smiley’s compassion; on Smiley the curse of Karla’s fanaticism. I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other’s frontiers, we are the no-men of this no-man’s-land.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“One small man, in a worker’s half-length coat, with a worker’s satchel slung across his little chest, walking neither fast nor slowly, but walking like a man who walked a lot. One small man, his body a fraction too long for his legs, hatless despite the snow. That is all that happens, Smiley thought; one little man walks across a bridge.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“If he comes, he’ll come on time,” Smiley had said. Then why do we get here two hours early? Guillam had wanted to ask. Why do we sit here, like two strangers, drinking sweet coffee out of little cups, soaked in the steam of this wretched Turkish kitchen, talking platitudes? But he knew the answer already. Because we owe, Smiley would have said if he had been in a talking mood. Because we owe the caring and the waiting, we owe this vigil over one man’s effort to escape the system he has helped create. For as long as he is trying to reach us, we are his friends. Nobody else is on his side.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“He had known Berlin when it was the world capital of the cold war, when every crossing point from East to West had the tenseness of a major surgical operation. He remembered how on nights like these, clusters of Berlin policemen and Allied soldiers used to gather under the arc lights, stamping their feet, cursing the cold, fidgeting their rifles from shoulder to shoulder, puffing clouds of frosted breath into each other’s faces. He remembered how the tanks waited, growling to keep their engines warm, their gun barrels picking targets on the other side, feigning strength. He remembered the sudden wail of the alarm klaxons and the dash to the Bernauerstrasse or wherever the latest escape attempt might be. He remembered the fire-brigade ladders going up; the orders to shoot back; the orders not to; the dead, some of them agents. But after tonight, he knew that he would remember it only like this: so dark you wanted to take a torch with you into the street, so still you could have heard the cocking of a rifle from across the river.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“Certainly he gave Karla very little time to make up his mind. For that too is an axiom of pressure, as Karla was well aware: time to think is dangerous, except that in this case, there is reason to suppose that it was dangerous to Smiley also, though for vastly different reasons: he might have relented at the eleventh hour. Only the immediate call to action, says the Sarratt folklore, will force the quarry to slip the ropes of his restraint and, against every impulse born or taught to him, sail into the blue. The same, on this occasion, may be said to have applied equally to the hunter.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“Young girls are brought here in many capacities. We have godchildren. We have wards. Nieces. Orphans. Cousins. Aunts, a few. A few sisters. And now a professor. But you would be very surprised how few daughters there are in the world.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“And Smiley, sitting so quiet, so immobile, as the party broke up around him, what did he feel? On the face of it, this was a moment of high achievement for him. He had done everything he had set out to do, and more, even if he had resorted to Karla’s techniques for the purpose. He had done it alone; and today, as the record would show, he had broken and turned Karla’s hand-picked agent in the space of a couple of hours. Unaided, even hampered by those who had called him back to service, he had fought his way through to the point where he could honestly say he had burst the last important lock. He was in late age, yet his tradecraft had never been better; for the first time in his career, he held the advantage over his old adversary. On the other hand, that adversary had acquired a human face of disconcerting clarity. It was no brute whom Smiley was pursuing with such mastery, no unqualified fanatic after all, no automaton. It was a man; and one whose downfall, if Smiley chose to bring it about, would be caused by nothing more sinister than excessive love, a weakness with which Smiley himself, from his own tangled life, was eminently familiar.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“But when the car finally stopped, and one of the men put a hand on his arm, and addressed a warning to him: at this point, his attitude changed entirely, sir: “You are about to meet a great Soviet fighter and a powerful man,” the man told him. “If you are disrespectful to him, or attempt to tell lies, you may never again see your wife and family.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“Once again, Toby insists on bearing witness here to Smiley’s unique mastery of the occasion. It was the strongest proof yet of Smiley’s tradecraft, says Toby—as well as of his command of Grigoriev altogether—that throughout Grigoriev’s protracted narrative, he never once, whether by an over-hasty follow-up question or the smallest false inflection of his voice, departed from the faceless rôle he had assumed for the interrogation. By his self-effacement, Toby insists, George held the whole scene “like a thrush’s egg in his hand.” The slightest careless movement on his part could have destroyed everything, but he never made”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“I was in Moscow,” he said, and in Toby’s ears, as he afterwards declares, angel choirs sang their hallelujahs. George had turned the trick, and Grigoriev’s confession had begun.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“Still using his glum tone of official necessity, Smiley set about explaining what Karla would have called the pressures. Other inquisitors, says Toby, would have offered Grigoriev a choice, thereby inevitably mustering the Russian obstinacy in him, and the Russian penchant for self-destruction: the very impulses, he says, which could have invited catastrophe. Other inquisitors, he insists, would have menaced, raised their voices, resorted to histrionics, even physical abuse. Not George, he says: never. George acted out the low-key official time-server, and Grigoriev, like Grigorievs the world over, accepted him as his unalterable fate. George bypassed choice entirely, says Toby. George calmly made clear to Grigoriev why it was that he had no choice at all:”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“Grigoriev was rubbing his shoulder, seemingly unaware of anything but the pain. Studying him, Smiley took comfort from this gesture of self-concern: subconsciously, Grigoriev was declaring himself to be one of life’s losers. Smiley remembered Kirov, his botched pass at Ostrakova and his laborious recruitment of Otto Leipzig. He looked at Grigoriev and read the same incurable mediocrity in everything he saw: in the new but ill-chosen striped suit that emphasised his portliness; in the treasured grey shoes, punctured for ventilation but too tight for comfort; in the prinked, waved hair. All these tiny, useless acts of vanity communicated to Smiley an aspiration to greatness which he knew—as Grigoriev seemed to know—would never be fulfilled. A former academic, he remembered, from the document Enderby had handed him at Ben’s Place. Appears to have abandoned university teaching for the larger privileges of officialdom. A pincher, Ann would have said, weighing his sexuality at a single glance. Dismiss him.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“In the world of a secret agent, the wall between safety and extreme hazard is almost nothing, a membrane that can be burst in a second. He may court a man for years, fattening him for the pass. But the pass itself—the “will you, won’t you?”—is a leap from which there is either ruin or victory,”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“With the calm of impending battle, Toby appraised him and confirmed what he had all along maintained: Anton Grigoriev was not a fieldman. His rapt attention, the unguarded frankness of his expressions as each move was played or contemplated, had an innocence that could never have survived the infighting of Moscow Centre.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People

“For a moment longer Smiley hesitated. For a moment, he weighed the method against the prize, and the grey and distant figure of Karla seemed actually to admonish him. “The green light, then,” said Smiley. “Yes. Go.” He had barely finished speaking before Toby was standing in the telephone kiosk not twenty metres from the pavilion. “With my heart going like a complete steam engine,” as he later claimed. But also with the light of battle in his eyes.”
― John Le Carré, Smiley's People