Waking and sleeping she had demanded to know where she belonged in a white man's world, and how and where she should invest her ambition and her huma… - John le Carré

Why was London the only capital in the world that lost its personality at night? Smiley, as he pulled his coat more closely about him, could think of nowhere, from Los Angeles to Berne, which so readily gave up its daily struggle for identity.

I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now i wish i could distinguish them.

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.”