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15f4db1
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And we dress, sir --?" he murmured, feeling Osnard's gaze burning the nape of his neck. "Most of my gentlemen seem to favour left these days. I don't it's political." This was his standard joke, calculated to raise a laugh even with the most sedate of his customers. Not with Osnard apparently. "Never know where the bloody thing is. Bobs about like a windsock," he replied dismissively."
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John le Carré |
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0028a52
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He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.
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passion
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John le Carré |
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42f8a85
|
I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me?
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John Le Carré |
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5156c83
|
I have destroyed him with the weapons I abhorred, and they are his. We have crossed each other's frotiers, we are the no-men of this no-man's land.
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John le Carré |
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85bd976
|
But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing.
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love-hurts
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John le Carré |
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6c24875
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Charlie alone knew he was a ghost.
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John le Carré |
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592cc75
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It dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle-age without ever being young, and that he was, in the nicest possible way, "on the shelf"."
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John le Carré |
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c237fbb
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The Armorys of this world don't steal. They serve their country right or wrong. Or they do until the day when they come face to face with real life and their warped rectitude deserts them and their faces unlock and become real, puzzled faces like everybody else's. So there's another god for you that's passed its sell-by date: enlightened patriotism, until this afternoon Nick Armory's religion. (ch. 14)
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John le Carré |
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6766ea9
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He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? 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..
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John le Carré |
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5a294a8
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The greatest crime is to do nothing because we can only do a little (...) I feel nothing, because feeling is subversive and contrary to military discipline. Therefore I do not feel, but I fight and therefore I exist. (part I, chapter 10)
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John le Carré |
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35292de
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To dream in doctrines, how tidy!
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inspiration
legalism
rules
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John le Carré |
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78feb2d
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Arseholes who are expert at making something out of nothing [...] appeared equally capable of making nothing out of something
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John le Carré |
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0681cf4
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He was witnessing an insane relay race in which each contestant ran faster and longer than the last, arriving nowhere but his own destruction
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John le Carré |
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f6d0907
|
I know their unstinted devotion to the free-market economy, provided it's their freedom and somebody else's economy.
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John le Carré |
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6dda896
|
I don't break down," she announced. "Got it?" He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed of himself, but somehow he was still holding her wrist. "I never break down. I'm a lawyer."
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feelings
i-m-sorry
john-le-carre
sorry
emotions
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John le Carré |
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a395b0a
|
Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgements to Joseph Conrad.
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heroes
espionage
spy
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John le Carré |
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819e16a
|
more cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paid-up pessimist, he knew he had none.
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John le Carré |
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2a58a70
|
Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he..
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John le Carré |
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24d4a3f
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They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world.
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John le Carré |
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ff09db5
|
Most of all he asked about their philosophy. To Leamas that was the most difficult question of all. 'What do you mean, a philosophy?' he replied. 'We're not Marxists, we're nothing. Just people.' 'Are you Christians, then?' 'Not many, I shouldn't think. I don't know many.' 'What makes them do it, then?' Fiedler persisted. 'They must have a philosophy.' 'Why must they? Perhaps they don't know, don't even care. Not everyone has a philosophy,'..
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John le Carré |
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ca1f8eb
|
The snow is still falling and the worst man in the world is drawn towards it like a man who is contemplating his childhood in the dancing flakes.
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John le Carré |
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7e1c061
|
There is no one better than a good Englishman and no one worse than a bad one. I have observed you. I think you are a good one. Mr Pine, do you know Richard Roper?
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John le Carré |
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d383540
|
He has his chin on his chest and his eyes down. He is thinking of his new baby, his new novel, tomorrow's dance contest. He is thinking of everything except what he is thinking about.
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John le Carré |
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4ceb41e
|
Pain observed is journalistic pain. It's diplomatic pain. It's television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set.
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John le Carré |
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ca4e311
|
Why and earth should an unshaven young man in a track suit be carrying a basket of oranges and yesterday's newspaper? The whole boat must of noticed him!
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John le Carré |
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b67af3f
|
There were times when he confronted his own image as a man confronts an empty valley, and the vision propelled him forward again to experience as despair compels us to extinction. Sometimes he was like a man in flight, but running toward the enemy, desperate to feel upon his vanishing body the blows that would prove his being; desperate to imprint upon his sad conformity the mark of real purpose, desperate perhaps, as Leclerc had hinted, to..
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John le Carré |
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a46fa07
|
For a long moment, while Brock stood off observing them, Ned and Barley appraised one another as only Englishmen can who are of the same height and class and shape of head.
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head-shape
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John le Carré |
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5217e6a
|
And from there, he wandered off into an argument with Friedrich Schiller's grandiose statement that human stupidity was what the gods fought in vain. Not so, in Toby's opinion, and no excuse for anybody, whether god or man. What the gods and all reasonable humans fought in vain wasn't stupidity at all. It was sheer, wanton, bloody indifference to anybody's interests but their own.
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John le Carré |
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29563a3
|
Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.
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urgent
time-management
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John le Carré |
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71d995f
|
He appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes.
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ostentation
taste
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John le Carré |
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5f44896
|
George, you won,' said Guillam, as they walked slowly towards the car. 'Did I?' said Smiley. 'Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did.
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pyrrhic-victory
smiley
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John le Carré |
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93c06ad
|
Martindale had no valid claim on Smiley either professionally or socially. He worked on the fleshy side of the Foreign Office and his job consisted of lunching visiting dignitaries whom no one else would have entertained in his woodshed. He was a floating bachelor with a grey mane and that nimbleness which only fat men have.
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fat-men
fleshy
nimbleness
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John le Carré |
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862ba83
|
Demos are mock battles, never the real thing. Everybody knows where they're going to happen, and when and why. Nobody gets seriously hurt. Well, not unless they ask for it. (ch. 4)
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John le Carré |
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55e397b
|
Western teaching institutions that refuse to acknowledge today's taboos are by definition subversive. Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite. Tell them there was no Garden of Creation and they will call you a dangerous cynic. Tell them God is what man invented to compensate for his ignorance of science and they will call you a Communist.
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John le Carré |
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b4de456
|
What did theories matter any more? She wanted to say. The rats have taken over the ship, it's often as simple as that; the rest is narcissistic crap. It must be. (...) For exploitation read property and you have the whole bit. First the exploiter hits the wage-slave over the head with his superior wealth; then he brainwashes him into believing that the pursuit of property is a valid motive for breaking him at the grindstone. That way he has..
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John le Carré |
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9394d84
|
A terrorist for Karen is someone who has a bomb but no aeroplane. Ch. 4
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John le Carré |
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44b9082
|
It was the skinny boy's stillness, he decided later. Those lines of age in a face as young as mine. His look of winter on a lovely spring day.
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John le Carré |
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c09d14e
|
Never confess, my friend," he advised drowsily, clasping Melik's hand. "If you confess, they will keep you there forever."
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John le Carré |
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2c9e851
|
The driver was holding open the rear door. He was young and blond, a boy in his prime.
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John le Carré |
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84d1a1a
|
Todd and Larry were Quinn's people. They were clean-limbed and pretty and, for a man of my age, ludicrously youthful.
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John le Carré |
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ea8a612
|
There was a pause. Mendel said: 'It's the devil you don't know that gets you.
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John le Carré |
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901fd53
|
Her instinct was to defend, to hoard the treasures of her life, to build about herself the symbols of normal existence.
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John le Carré |
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766dd00
|
Information is not knowledge, mind you.
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John le Carré |
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e855c6d
|
It comforted the great to deal with it and they knew, a man who could reduce any color to grey.
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conventionalism
status-quo
|
John le Carré |