"Tinker Tailor Solider Spy"

Our man Smiley:

• concluded with a dispassion inseparable from the humble part of his nature that they were of his own making.
• “George, how can you be so vulgar? Nobody divorces Ann. Send her flowers and come to lunch.”
• of spiritual exhaustion
• Power sits poorly on those we’ve grown up with.
• “...and an inability to live a self-sufficient life independent of institutions”—a puddle emptied itself neatly into his shoe—“and emotional attachments that have long outlived their purpose. Viz., my wife; viz., the Circus;
• Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one’s own generation.

The case unfolds:

• “I could scent it, Mr. Smiley. There was gold in her. I could scent it from the start. Knowledge is power, they say, sir, and Irina had the power.”
• “Partly, I guess, I couldn’t bear to think of a letter of hers kicking around in a hole in a wall while she sweated it out in the hot seat,” he added, the ever-redeemable boy.
• “ ‘To possess another language is to possess another soul.’ A great king wrote that, sir, Charles the Fifth.
• Thus Brod became Ivlov and Ivlov became Lapin: of this poor Ivlov was extremely proud. (I did not tell him what Lapin means in French.) That a man’s wealth should be counted by the number of his names!
• Thomas, I tell you this because, since I love you, I have decided to admire all English, you most of all. I do not wish to think of an English gentleman behaving as a traitor, though naturally I believe he was right to join the workers’ cause.
• Morality was method.
• “It’s the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies? Who can smell out the fox without running with him?”
• But Lacon as a good civil servant had his second metaphor ready: “Very well, the Minister would rather live with a damp roof than see his castle pulled down by outsiders.”
• With numbers, with facts of all sorts, Lacon never faltered. They were the gold he worked with, wrested from the grey bureaucratic earth.
• But what woman was ever stopped by a want of information? She felt. And despised him for not acting in accordance with her feelings.
• Peter Guillam was a chivalrous fellow whose conscious loyalties were determined by his affections.
• the long middle age of the grounded pro

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