There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would say that, as with many Englishes, the moment is somewhat delayed.

— John le Carré

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is forever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never."" So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nevsky?"" Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God.

— John le Carré

There was nothing dishonorable 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.

— John le Carré

The vertical man Though we value none But the horizontal one.

— John le Carré

They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.

— John le Carré

This is a war," Lamas replied. "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. But it's nothing, nothing at all besides other wars - the last or the next.

— John le Carré

To dream in doctrines, how tidy!

— John le Carré

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

— John le Carré

Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another look at the bridge, as if to establish whether anything had changed, but clearly it had not, and though the wind appeared a little stronger, the snow was still swirling in all directions.

— John le Carré

We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?

— John le Carré