Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
He has the gift of quiet.
Elections are a Western jerk-off.
I write and walk and swim and drink.
Let's die of it before we're too old.
Love means having something to betray.
Without a pen in my hand I can't think.
Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
You should have died when I killed you.
All power corrupts but some must govern.
All men are born free: just not for long.
Blackmail is more effective than bribery.
I can't think of anybody worse to live with.
A committee is an animal with four back legs.
I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.
I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.
Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.
I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention.
Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
I've always had difficulties with female characters.
The only reward for love is the experience of loving.
To possess another language is to possess another soul.
Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.
People are very secretive - secret even from themselves.
A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.
Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
Writers are two-home men - they want a place outside and a place within.
I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.
For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.
Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.
There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.
I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.
I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.