"Tinker Tailor Solider Spy"

Sometimes, mostly just office politics:

• In several cases, the winner was Toby Esterhase, head of Acton lamplighters, the one outstation that had actually grown fatter under lateralism.
• To Guillam, Haydon was of that unrepeatable, fading Circus generation, to which his parents and George Smiley also belonged—exclusive and, in Haydon’s case, blue-blooded—which had lived a dozen leisured lives to his own hasty one, and still, thirty years later, gave the Circus its dying flavour of adventure.
• Patiently Smiley waited for the speck of gold, for Connie was of an age where the only thing a man could give her was time.
• Her speculations, in terms of the acceptable arithmetic of intelligence, seemed even wilder than before.
• “There were three cultural attachés already: two of them were hoods and the only thing the third did was cart the flowers up to Highgate Cemetery for poor Karl Marx.”
• A very dull monument, Smiley reflected, surveying these much-handled files, to such a long and cruel war.
• ...assumed he was stupid, which Percy never quite was.
• I’m too vain to be flattered,
• “And like everyone who’s had enough,” said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, “he wants more.”
• “Tell them they’re buying their way in with counterfeit money.” And if the banks accept the money?
• His trouble was, he said, promotion. Not that he wanted it for any greedy reason. He would say his reasons were social.
•  Nervous breakdowns or not, Bland still bore the imprimatur of the Thatch philosophy for agents in the enemy camp: self-faith, positive participation, Pied Piper appeal,
• “And I’m definitely functioning, George. As a good Socialist, I’m going for the money. As a good capitalist, I’m sticking with the revolution, because if you can’t beat it spy on it.
• Each time he thought of him, he drew him too large, and different.
• And it was true, Smiley conceded, that Bill in his time had fiddled with substantial pieces of history;
• ...his rare sense of balance in the playing back of double agents and the mounting of deception operations; his art of fostering affection, even love, though it ran against the grain of other loyalties. As witness, thank you, my wife.
• And once, to shock, he brought a ghastly youth called Steggie, an assistant barman from one of the Chelsea pubs,
• ...ambled to the bookcase, where he stood a full shelf higher than Smiley.
• while Bill enunciated his latest vision of politics,

• Ann was sitting across the room from him in her dressing gown, wearing no make-up. There was no scene; everyone behaved with painful naturalness.
• Next morning, without even wishing to, Smiley established that Bill had been back in London two days, not one. Following the episode, Bill showed an uncharacteristic deference towards Smiley, and Smiley reciprocated with acts of courtesy which normally belong to a newer friendship.
• If the word was correct, Ann had broken three of her own rules.
• Ann, to his mortification, was covering the Haydon card with as many others as she could pull from the pack.

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