134 quotes found
“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.”
“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 t...”
“I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that...”
“Put it this way, George, he suggested, when he had savoured the night air for a moment. You traveling on business, or for pleasure in this thing? Which is it?Smileys reply was also slow in coming, ...”
“The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous”
“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 English, the moment is somewhat delayed.”
“If there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epitaph, thought Barley. 'There was no sea-gull, so he aborted.”
“There was nothing dishonourable 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.”
“He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man”
“Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.”
“He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.”
“Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each oth...”
“A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a matter of experience, a profe...”
“When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.”
“Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mothers shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not se...”
“A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.”
“The vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.”
“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
“All men are born free: just not for long.”
“You should have died when I killed you.”
