No Problem Exists In Isolation, One Must

When A Problem Threatens To Engulf You, There's Nothing Like Irrelevant Detail To Keep Your Head Above Water.

The Only Reward For Love Is The Experience Of Loving.

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Was The Work Of A Wayward Imagination Brought To The End Of Its Tether By Political Disgust And Personal Confusion. Fifty Years On, I Don't Associate The Book With Anything That Ever Happened To Me, Save For One Wordless Encounter At London Airport When A Worn-out, Middle-aged Military Kind Of Man In A Stained Raincoat Slammed A Handful Of Mixed Foreign Change On To The Bar And In Gritty Irish Accents Ordered Himself As Much Scotch As It Would Buy. In That Moment, Alec Leamas Was Born. Or So My Memory, Not Always A Reliable Informant, Tells Me.

For All The Flailing And Huffing And Puffing, There Is A Kind Of Fatality About The Process Of War-making And The Excuses We Find For It, The Consolation Of Belligerence In Politics.

Treason Is Very Much A Matter Of Habit, Smiley Decided.