Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.

This is a war," Lemas 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.

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.