Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love. - John le Carré

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

John Lansbury had remarked upon it: “You have sales resistance to the dramatic, Brim; the rare gift of contempt for what is urgent. I know of a dozen people who would pay you five thousand a year for telling them every day that what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”

The monstrosity of this, reaching Smiley through a thickening wall of spiritual exhaustion, left him momentarily speechless.