Home > Work > Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1)
1 " He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man "
― John le Carré , Call for the Dead (George Smiley #1)
2 " Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage. "
3 " He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year. "
4 " one of those world builders who do othing but destroy, "
5 " Afterwards Smiley always thought of that interview as a fan dance; a calculated progression of disclosures, each revealing different parts of a mysterious entity. Finally Steed-Asprey, who seemed to be Chairman, removed the last veil, and the truth stood before him in all its dazzling nakedness. He was being offered a post in what, for want of a better name, Steed-Asprey blushingly described as the Secret Service. "
6 " society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation. "
7 " But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing. "
8 " They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company. "
9 " She had the experience to suffer with discretion. "
10 " To dream in doctrines, how tidy! "
11 " Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. ...when had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom? "
12 " However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing. "
13 " Can't you see it's the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour. Is that what you want? "
14 " It dawned on him gradually that he had entered middle-age without ever being young, and that he was, in the nicest possible way, "on the shelf". "
15 " They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world. "
16 " He appeared to spend a lot of money on really bad clothes. "
17 " There was a pause. Mendel said: 'It's the devil you don't know that gets you. "
18 " Her instinct was to defend, to hoard the treasures of her life, to build about herself the symbols of normal existence. "
19 " It comforted the great to deal with it and they knew, a man who could reduce any color to grey. "
20 " Les mauvaises langues ont l'habitude de voir leurs cobayes tout en noir ou tout en blanc et de leur attribuer des défauts ou des mobiles que le style sténographique de la conversation peut aisément suggérer. "
