The Tailor of Panama Quotes

“And we dress, sir --?" he murmured, feeling Osnard's gaze burning the nape of his neck. "Most of my gentlemen seem to favour left these days. I don't think it's political."
This was his standard joke, calculated to raise a laugh even with the most sedate of his customers. Not with Osnard apparently.
"Never know where the bloody thing is. Bobs about like a windsock," he replied dismissively.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“All right, Pendel had lied to him, if lying was the word. He had told Osnard what he wanted to hear and gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain it for him, including making it up. Some people lied because lying gave them a kick, made them feel braver or cleverer than all the lowly conformists who went on their bellies and told the truth. Not Pendel. Pendel lied to conform. To say the right things at all times, even if the right things were in one place, and the truth was in another.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“And what’s life if it isn’t invention? Starting with inventing yourself.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“What that judge did is immoral. Here in Panama when we bribe somebody we expect loyalty.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“I always say South America’s the only place where you cut a gentleman his suit one week and see his statue wearing it the next.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“...Arthur Braithwaite, known to Louisa and the children as God. And all right, strictly speaking Braithwaite did not exist. Why should he? Not every god has to exist in order to do his job.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“Everything in the world is true if you invent it hard enough and love the person it’s for!”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“The embassy’s front door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak. You attained it by touching a button in a silent lift. The royal crest, in this air-conditioned stillness, suggested silicone and funeral parlours. The windows, like the doors, had been toughened to frustrate the Irish and tinted to frustrate the sun. Not a whisper of the real world penetrated. The silent traffic, cranes, shipping, old town and new town, the brigade of women in orange tunics gathering leaves along the central reservation of the Avenida Balboa, were mere specimens in Her Majesty’s inspection chamber. From the moment you set foot in British extraterritorial airspace, you were looking in, not out. —”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“All righ, Pendel had lied to him, if lying was the word. He had told Osnard what he wanted to hear and gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain it for him, including making it up. Some people lied because lying gave them a kick, made them feel braver or cleverer than all the lowly conformists who went on their bellies and told the truth. Not Pendel. Pendel lied to conform. To say the right things at all times, even if the right things were in one place, and the truth was in another.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“Osnard’s self-appointed mentor and guide has one more card to play, and Osnard must watch him do it, since little that Luxmore ever does is real unless it is observed by others.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“Dangerous diffidence is what I call it, young Mr. Osnard. The world’s one superpower restrained by puritan principle, God help us.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“tarpaulin”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“She had forgotten, if she had ever known, how disarmingly polite an English gentleman could be when he put his insincere mind to it. Humour and politeness together, her mother used to warn her, make a dangerous heap of charm.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“privation”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“The posse moved at politician speed: much bustle and circumstance, chattering like schoolkids freed from detention”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“But while Pendel loved his family with dutiful energy and devotion, he also feared for it and trained himself to regard his happiness as fool’s gold.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“There’s no racial discrimination in Panama, you’ll be pleased to learn, but they don’t care for Turcos a lot, specially not new ones, and faces do get whiter as you go up the social ladder. What I call altitude sickness.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“Wet red blisters round his ankles, more round his wrists. A man in chains must learn not to writhe while he is beaten, but learning this takes time.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“You alone, Harry, know what it is worth to you to desert your family for the night and go to your club and amuse yourself among other men and women instead of being a presence to those who love you, Harry.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“A new judge was appointed after the election, and the bribe wasn’t transferable from the old one to the new one, you see. Now the new judge is marking time to see which side comes up with the best offer. The clerk says the new judge has got more integrity than the old one, so naturally he’s more expensive. Scruples are expensive in Panama, he says.”
― John Le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel

“Not that his enlistment was a forgone conclusion. This was the new slimline Service, free of the shackles of the past, classless in the great Tory tradition, with men and women democratically hand-picked from all walks of the white, privately educated, suburban classes. And Osnard was as hand-picked as the rest of them.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“Osnard proposed the National Trust.
"Do you like old buildings?" the secretary asked, as if he feared that Osnard might blow them up.
"Adore them. Total addict."
"Quite so."
With trembling fingertips, the secretary lifted a corner of a file and peered inside.
"I suppose they might just take you. You're disreputable. Charm of a sort. Bilingual, if they like Spanish. Nothing lost by giving them a try, I dare say."
"The National Trust?"
"No, no. The spies. Here. Take this to a dark corner and fill it in with invisible ink.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“It was a different judge by then, Ramón. A new judge was appointed after the election and the bribe wasn't transferable from the old one to the new one, you see. Now the new judge is marking time to see which side comes up with the best offer. The clerk says the new judge has got more integrity than the old one, so naturally he's more expensive. Scruples are expensive in Panama, he says. And it's getting worse.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“It was a system of survival that Pendel had developed in prison and perfected in marriage, and its purpose was to provide a hostile world with whatever made it feel at ease with itself. To make it tolerable. To befriend it. To draw its sting.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“I wasn't there, it was two other blokes, she hit me first and it was with her consent, Your Honour.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“When we can't hurt our enemies, we hurt our friends.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“..., it's a law. A man's got to pay for his own dreams.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“since nothing is more predictable than the media’s parroting of its own fictions and the terror of each competitor that it will be scooped by the others, whether or not the story is true, because”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama: A Novel