Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Quotes
"The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all."
"Several of the staff, but chiefly Marjoribanks, were in favor of opening that trunk."
"The rain rolled like gun-smoke down the brown combes of the Quantocks."
"Roach was a new boy in those days and graded dull, if not actually deficient."
"His mother lived grandly in Bath; his father was agreed to be the richest in the school, a distinction which cost the son dear."
"In Roach’s observation Jim did not stop at the school buildings but continued across the sweep to the stable yard."
"Jim was unaware of these associations. The fact remains that by sheer luck he had chosen the one corner of Thursgood’s academy which as far as Roach was concerned was endowed with supernatural properties."
"‘Who the hell are you?’ asked a very military voice."
"Well that’s a turn up for the book, I will say."
"This diary is my gift for you in case they take me away before I speak to Alleline. I would prefer to give you my life, Thomas, and naturally my body, but I think it more likely that this wretched secret will be all I have to make you happy. Use it well!"
"It is such a strain never to give your heart, not once."
"Sometimes only the body can speak for us, you should have appeared earlier, Thomas!"
"In Russia we are taught that Moscow has no poor districts but this is a lie."
"In my heart I am free. You have seen only the bad things in me, the drink, the fear, the lies we live. But deep inside me burns a new and blessed light."
"God has shown me that the secret world is not separate. It is here, right in the middle of the real world, all around us, and we have only to open the door and step outside to be free."
"You must always long for the light which I have found. It is called love."
"A bullet in the back is held to be quite a sacrifice, even in your world."
"I never heard of anyone yet who left the Circus without some unfinished business."
"It is sheer vanity to believe that one, fat, middle-aged spy is the only person capable of holding the world together."
"You’re very naughty, George. Do you hear? Look at me. Don’t look that way, it’s all neon lights and Sodom."
"Poor loves. Trained to Empire, trained to rule the waves. All gone. All taken away. Bye-bye world."
"It’s the name of the game these days: you scratch my conscience, I’ll drive your Jag, right?"
"I refuse to bequeath my life’s work to a parade horse."
"You’re the last, George, you and Bill. And filthy Percy a bit."
"Ann ever tell you about wicked Uncle Fry? Thought the servants were bugging the roses to find out where he’d hidden his money."
"Along comes this upstart Percy, damn Caledonian street-merchant, no shadow of class, shoving a whole wagonload of Russian goodies."
"There’s too much regional back-biting, stimulated from the top."
"I have not the face," wrote Alleline with rare frankness to the Minister, "to mention this subject to my staff again."
"Sitting down he pretended to read but passed the time thinking of Camilla."
"‘What went wrong?’ ‘Nothing. We weren’t right for each other.’ Guillam didn’t believe her."
"‘I think the vital thing, Peter,’ - Smiley speaking - ‘is not to leave a gap.’"
"Peter, if you have the smallest reservation, you really mustn’t go ahead with it. Nothing is as important as that."
"‘For these files, consult H/London Station or CC,’ standing for Chief of Circus and his appointed mothers."
"‘Our Shadow Foreign Secretary,’ Haydon called him. The janitors called him Snow White because of his hair."
"‘I’ll have no phone calls, tell them,’ Alleline shouted as Toby opened the door."
"‘Wotcher, Peter’ then followed him all the way down the table with his bulging pale eyes."
"‘I’m Joy,’ she said in a theatrical voice, like ‘I’m Virtue’ or ‘I’m Continence’. It wasn’t his coat she wanted but a kiss."
"‘It is the business of agent runners to turn themselves into legends,’ Smiley began."
"Jim acts from instinct... He's functional... He's my other half, between us we'd make one marvellous man."
"By the way: though he is made up of all different bits of Europe, make no mistake: the completed version is devoutly our own."
"Draw a line, make a new life, forget the whole thing."
"That's what they asked me at the interrogation."
"He'd nothing to do with the Warsaw Pact Liaison staff. His real job was in Moscow Centre's England section."
"What Stevcek really wants to sell us is the name of Moscow Centre's mole inside the Circus."
"It's the gentle art of doing damn all convincingly."
"His only consolation was that they had sandbagged the Magyar."
"The more you pay for it, the less inclined you are to doubt it."
"Poor Toby: yes, I do see. What a time you must have been having, running between them all."
"Survival, as Jim Prideaux liked to recall, is an infinite capacity for suspicion."
"The lighting was quite yellow and from where Mendel stood, on the third floor of the clothes shop, the wet tarmac glistened like cheap gold."
"The footpath is closed to the public one hour before dark: after that it can be anything from a trysting place for lovers to a haven for down-and-outs."
"Occasionally an empty train raced past, leaving a still greater emptiness behind."
"He thought of Jim and Sam and Max and Connie and Jerry Westerby and personal loyalties all broken."
"He wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion."
"Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided, seeing Bill again stretched out on the floor in Bywater Street, while Ann played him music on the gramophone."
"But big things, like his walks and solitary golf, these he gave up altogether."
"His eye grew clearer and he became alert again."
"The gun, Bill Roach had finally convinced himself, was after all a dream."