Look, we are getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems... Don't you think it's time to rec… - John le Carré

He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.

In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.

He would set up as a mild eccentric, discursive, withdrawn, but possessing one or two lovable habits such as muttering to himself as he bumbled along pavements. Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time.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, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.