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

He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.

I shall have to wear the special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings.