A Murder of Quality Quotes

“All men are born free: just not for long.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now i wish i could distinguish them.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realized that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9)”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“He hated to be alone, but people bored him. Being alone was like being tired, but unable to sleep.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Shane was horrid to her, always sneering at her because she was honest and simple about the things she liked. Shane hated Stella—I think it was because Stella didn’t want to be a lady of quality. She was quite happy to be herself. That’s what really worried Shane. Shane likes people to compete so that she can make fools of them.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Only adults had nervous breakdowns in those days, so the methods of survival for boys who refused to join the system were animal cunning, “internal immigration” as the Germans call it, or simply getting the hell out. I practised the first two, then opted for the third and took myself to Switzerland.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“It was like feeding a small child. You couldn't over load the spoon.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“We just don't know what people are like, we can never tell; there isn't any truth about human beings, no formula that meets each one of us.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“There was a fellow called Smiley married Ann Sercomb, Lord Sawley’s cousin. Damned pretty girl, Ann was, and went and married this fellow. Some funny little beggar in the Civil Service with an OBE and a gold watch. Sawley was damned annoyed.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Smiley himself was one of those solitaries who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonymity and his safety. His fear makes him servile—he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. But this fear, this servility, this dependence, had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the wood. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures and their words, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and the broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“I read a story once about a poet who bathed himself in cold fountains so that he could recognise his own existence in the contrast. He had to reassure himself, you see, like a child being hateful to its parents. You might say he had to make the sun shine on him so that he could see his shadow and feel alive.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Looks like a frog, dresses like a bookie, and has a brain I’d give my eyes for. Had a very nasty war. Very nasty indeed.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“right…What do you do for a living, Smiley?” “After the war I was at Oxford for a bit. Teaching and research. I’m in London now.” “One of those clever coves, eh?”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Nobody seems to understand you can’t build society overnight. It takes centuries to make a gentleman.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Yet was it a sane world? Year in year out they must share the same life, say the same things to the same people, sing the same hymns. They had no money, no hope. The world changed, fashion changed; the women saw it second-hand in the glossy papers, took in their dresses and pinned up their hair, and hated their husbands a little more.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“It had been one of Smiley’s cardinal principles in research, whether among the incunabula of an obscure poet or the laboriously gathered fragments of intelligence, not to proceed beyond the evidence. A fact, once logically arrived at, should not be extended beyond its natural significance.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“But this fear, this servility, this dependence, had developed in Smiley a perception for the colour of human beings: a swift, feminine sensitivity to their characters and motives. He knew mankind as a huntsman knows his cover, as a fox the wood. For a spy must hunt while he is hunted, and the crowd is his estate. He could collect their gestures and their words, record the interplay of glance and movement, as a huntsman can record the twisted bracken and the broken twig, or as a fox detects the signs of danger.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Smiley himself was one of those solitaries who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country’s enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“once in the war he had been described by his superiors as possessing the cunning of Satan and the conscience of a virgin, which seemed to him not wholly unjust.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“These small, out-of-the-way villages are pretty strange places,” he concluded. “Often only three or four families, all so inbred you can no more sort them out than a barnful of cats. That’s where your village idiots come from. They call it the Devil’s Mark; I call it incest. They hate to have them in the village, you know—they’ll drive them away at any price, like trying to wash away their shame, if you follow me.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Miss Brimley, watching him, wished she knew a little more about George Smiley, how much of that diffidence was assumed, how vulnerable he was. “The best,” Adrian had said. “The strongest and the best.” But so many men learnt strength during the war, learnt terrible things, and put aside their knowledge with a shudder when it ended.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Watching him, Miss Brimley wondered what impression he made on those who did not know him well. She used to think of him as the most forgettable man she had ever met; short and plump, with heavy spectacles and thinning hair, he was at first sight the very prototype of an unsuccessful middle-aged bachelor in a sedentary occupation. His natural diffidence in most practical matters was reflected in his clothes, which were costly and unsuitable, for he was clay in the hands of his tailor, who robbed him.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“The value of intelligence depends on its breeding.” That was John Landsbury’s favourite dictum. Until you know the pedigree of the information you cannot evaluate a report. Yes, that was what he used to say: “We are not democratic. We close the door on intelligence without parentage.” And she used to reply: “Yes, John, but even the best families had to begin somewhere.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“Beneath the dolphin was a tiny scroll on which she could just discern the legend, Regem defendere diem videre. The postmark was Carne, Dorset.”
― John Le Carré, A Murder of Quality