Best The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Quotes by John le Carré

"You must go when you want. I’ll never follow you, Alec."

"If you want to go, go. You’ve been very good."

"Agents aren’t aeroplanes. They don’t have schedules."

"He’s blown, he’s on the run, he’s frightened."

"I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas."

"We can only give covering fire if the Vopos shoot into our sector."

"Intelligence work has one moral law—it is justified by results."

"We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren’t like that really."

"You must be consistent. At every turn one must be consistent."

"We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night."

"You can’t just leave it there, it’s litter."

"They pay and they ask for more. They’re the kind of people, you see, Leamas, who don’t fuss about awkward details."

"They are offering a down-payment of fifteen thousand pounds."

"I am interested in you. I want to make you a proposition, a journalistic proposition."

"If I want a woman I know cheaper ways of finding one; if I want to dance I know better places to do it."

"It’s just a question of whether the Yanks can hold them."

"We felt for everybody’s sake it would be simplest to meet outside the United Kingdom. My client suggested Holland."

"I haven’t got my passport," Leamas said dully.

"I took the liberty of obtaining one for you," Kiever replied suavely.

"I think I can manage my buttons now," Leamas retorted.

It’s six o’clock," he said, "breakfast at half past.

I’ve no luggage," Leamas replied, "except a toothbrush and a razor.

"Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates among people who have been up since dawn."

We flew," Kiever said; "a very smooth flight.

"You can’t really complain, you know. All our work—yours and mine—is rooted in the theory that the whole is more important than the individual."

I’m sorry," he said, "but I do not believe that one man, however well placed, however careful, however industrious, could have acquired such a range of detailed knowledge.

It is a little crude," said Fiedler, "but quite satisfying. No potato, I’m afraid. There is a temporary shortage of potato.

"We are not here to observe the ethical laws of English country life."

"The operation was successful. Whether you were worth it is questionable. We shall see. But it was a good operation. It satisfied the only requirement of our profession: it worked."

"I've told Peters, it's just bloody silly to imagine that any operation could have been run against East Germany without my knowledge—without the knowledge of the Berlin organisation. I would have known, d'you see? How many times do I have to say that? I would have known!"

Are you Christians, then?"
"Not many, I shouldn't think. I don't know many."
"What makes them do it, then? They must have a philosophy."
"Why must they? Perhaps they don't know; don't even care. Not everyone has a philosophy.

"If they do not know what they want, how can they be so certain they are right?"

"I just think the whole lot of you are bastards."

"The profession of defector demands great patience. Very few are suitably qualified."

"I wouldn’t have minded—I don’t think I would have minded, not so much anyway—if he had hurt me for myself, for hate or jealousy. Do you understand that? That long, long pain and all the time you say to yourself, 'Either I shall faint or I shall grow to bear the pain, nature will see to that' and the pain just increases like a violinist going up the E string."

"We’re all the same, you know, that’s the joke."

"I have nearly finished. Only one more thing needs to be said. Mundt gained a reputation as a loyal and astute protector of the people, and he silenced for ever those tongues that could betray his secret."

"It is not possible to imagine a crime more terrible than this. That is why—in the end—having done what he could to protect Karl Riemeck from the suspicion which was gradually surrounding him he gave the order that Riemeck be shot on sight."

"What other course lies open to them now that the rampart has been built across Berlin and the flow of Western spies has been checked? We have fallen victim to their plot; at best Comrade Fiedler is guilty of a most serious error; at worst of conniving with imperialist spies to undermine the security of the worker state, and shed innocent blood."

"They're the poor sods who try to keep the preachers from blowing each other sky high."

"You’re a fool, Leamas. She’s trash, like Fiedler."

"We're a tiny price to pay... but everywhere's the same, people cheated and misled, whole lives thrown away."

"I'm sick, sick of killing but I don't see what else they can do."

"They cheated us both because it was necessary. It was the only way."

"It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit."

"It's the world, it's mankind that's gone mad. We're a tiny price to pay."

"I don't believe in anything, don't you see—not even destruction or anarchy."

"It makes me sick with shame and anger and… But it's the world, it's mankind that's gone mad."