Sometimes she thought Alec was right—you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function. - John le Carré

Findley was not quite a character, thank you! Frau Ellenberger retorted furiously. He wasn't a character at all. Mr Findley was assembled entirely from characteristics stolen from other people!

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.

A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.