"He said the giant was a deity that offered salvation from a meaningless cycle of birth and rebirth, and perhaps the cracked stonework still possessed a lingering divinity."

"[...] in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful."

"Unanimity would maintain order. Enforcers aren't all Union agents. Even Yoona~939 chose death over slavery."

"Travel far enough, you meet yourself."

"A Soul's value is the dollars therein."

"List'n, savages an Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. Old Uns'd got the Smart o' gods but the savagery o' jackals, an' that's what tripped the Fall. Some Savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ'lized heart beatin' in their ribs. Maybe some Kona. Not 'nuff to sayso their hole tribe, but who knows one day? One day. "One day" was only a flea o' hope for us. Yay, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', but fleas ain't easy to rid."

"Fantasy. Lunacy. All revolutions are, until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities."

"Many xpert witnesses at. our trial denied Declarations could be the work of a fabricant, ascended or otherwise, and maintained it was ghosted by Union or a pureblood Abolitionst. How lazily "xperts" dismiss what they fail to understand."

"Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an' made miracles ord’nary, but it din’t master one thing, nay, a hunger in the hearts o' humans, yay, a hunger for more."

"I'm shoutin' back more'n forty long years at myself, yay, at Zachry the Niner, Oy, list'n! Times are you're weak 'gainst the world! Times are you can't do nothin'! That ain't your fault, it's this busted world's fault is all! But no matter how loud I shout, Boy Zachry, he don't hear me nor never will."

"Valleysmen'd not want to hear, she answered, that human hunger birthed the Civ'lize, but human hunger killed it too. I know it from other tribes offland what I stayed with. Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true."

"Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Mephi replied, "History suggests, not until they are made to."

"Rumors ricocheted around the dome: a Yoona had kidnapped a boy, no, a baby; no, a pureblood had kidnapped a Yoona; an enforcer had shot a boy; no, a fabricant had hit the seer whose nose was bleeding. All the while, Papa Song surfed noodle waves on His Plinth."

"[...] If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term."

"Then the true true is diff'rent to the seemin' true? said I. Yay, an' it usually is, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', an' that's why true true is presher'n'rarer'n diamonds."

"Memories refused to fit, or fitted but came unglued. Even months later, how would I know if some major tranche of myself remained lost?"

"Boundaries between noise and sound are conventions, I see now. All boundaries are conventions, national ones too. One may transcend any convention, if only one can first conceive of doing so."

"I became a scientist because... it's like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold."

"Anything is true if enough people believe it is."

"Did I ever lie to get my story? Ten-mile-high whoppers every day before breakfast, if it got me one inch closer to the truth"

"That love loves fidelity [...] is a myth woven by men from their insecurities."

"The very words "California Bound" are dusted in gold & beckon all men thitherwards like moths to a lantern."

"People knelt in prayer, some moving their lips. Envy 'em, really I do. I envy God, too, privy to their secrets. Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street."

"This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," says the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window."

"You would think a place the size of England could easily hold all the happenings in one humble lifetime without much overlap–I mean, it's not ruddy Luxembourg we live in–but no, we cross, crisscross, and recross our old tracks like figure skaters."

"No organist played a Magnificat but the wind in the flue chimney, no choir sang a Nunc Dimittis but the withering gulls, yet I fancy the Creator was not displeazed."

"People are obscenities. Would rather be music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function."

"That autumn night long ago Ursula had served a blob of grilled cheese on a slice of shame on a breast of chicken. Righter there—right here. I could still taste it. I can taste it as I write these words."

"Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience."

"As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent."

"To fool a judge, feign fascination, but to bamboozle the whole court, feign boredom."

"The better organized the state, the duller its humanity."

"Whoever opined "Money can't buy you happiness" obviously had far too much of the stuff."

"Et si vous nuisez à ma réputation, eh bien, il faudra que je ruine la vôtre!"

"...the dizzying vividness of the images of places and people that the letters have unlocked. Images so vivid she can only call them memories."

"They can extinguish awareness by dumbing down education, owning TV stations, paying "guest fees" to leader writers, or just buying the media up. The media—and not just The Washington Post—is where democracies conduct their civil wars."

"Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms around the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage."

"Your version of the truth is the only one that matters. Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths."

"What is "poker"? A card game where abler liars take money off less able liars."

"You speak like an aesthete sometimes, Sonmi. Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively."

"Under the Enrichment Laws, consumers have to spend a fixed quota of dollars each month, depending on their strata. Hoarding is an anti-corpocratic crime."

"On the way he became even more irritable and, from a callbox, sought an appointment with his solicitor for that afternoon. “George, how can you be so vulgar? Nobody divorces Ann. Send her flowers and come to lunch.”"

"Roddy Martindale had no valid claim on Smiley either professionally or socially. He worked on the fleshy side of the Foreign Office and his job consisted of lunching visiting dignitaries whom no one else would have entertained in his woodshed."

"“I'd leave that coat on if I were you, George, old boy,” said an amiable voice. “We've got a long way to go.”…Their destination was the residence of Mr. Oliver Lacon of the Cabinet Office, a senior adviser to various mixed committees and a watch-dog of intelligence affairs…Whitehall's head prefect."

"Bill Roach had a feeling he could not describe that Jim lived so precariously on the world's surface that he might at any time fall off into a void; for he feared that Jim was like himself, without a natural gravity to hold him on…Roach appointed himself Jim's regent-guardian…a stand-in replacing Jim's departed friend, whoever that friend might be."

"“You're a good watcher, anyway…No one else spotted me. Gave me a real turn up there, parked on the horizon. Thought you were a juju man. Best watcher in the unit, Bill Roach is, I'll bet. Long as he's got his specs on. What?” “Yes,” Roach agreed gratefully, “I am.”"

"Unlike Jim Prideaux, Mr. George Smiley was not naturally equipped for hurrying in the rain. Indeed, he might have been the final form for which Bill Roach was the prototype. Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth."

"The matter of Miss Aaronson's mail was more complex. There were two envelopes on the staffroom sideboard Thursday morning after chapel, one addressed to Jim and one to Miss Aaronson…At the door, Roach looked round. Jim was standing again, leaning back to open the morning's Daily Telegraph. The sideboard was empty. Both envelopes had gone. Had Jim written to Miss Aaronson and changed his mind? Proposing marriage, perhaps? Another thought came to Bill Roach…Was he so lonely that he wrote himself letters, and stole other people's as well?"

"Jim Prideaux arrived on a Friday in a rainstorm. The rain rolled like gun-smoke down the brown combes of the Quantocks, then raced across the empty cricket fields into the sandstone of the crumbling facades …Of the whole school only little Bill Roach actually saw Jim arrive, saw the steam belching from the Alvis' bonnet as it wheezed its way down the pitted drive…"

"“I'm surprised they didn't throw you out with the rest of us,” Smiley said, not very pleasantly. “You had all the qualifications: good at your work, loyal, discreet.”"