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Book: The Secret Pilgrim
Quotes of Book: The Secret Pilgrim
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  1. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    without the bonds of ideological conflict to restrain us any more, our troubles are just beginning.
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  2. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    Either she knew exactly, or not at all, the power of each slight gesture she made.
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  3. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    An undertaker contemplates his funeral, the rich man his destitution, the gaoler his imprisonment, the debauchee his impotence. An actor's greatest terror, I am told, is to watch the theatre empty itself while he wrestles in a void for his lines, and what else is that but a premature vision of his dying? For the civil servant, it is the moment when his protective walls of privilege collapse around him and he finds himself no safer than the next man, exposed to the gaze of the overt world, answering like a lying husband for his laxities and evasions.
    book-quote

  4. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise.
    book-quoteeducationjesuits

  5. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    We pretend a lot of things aren't there. Or we pretend that other things are more important. That's how we survive.
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  6. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    Forgive me. Sometimes an answer can vary with a context, if you follow me
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  7. John le Carré _ The Secret Pilgrim

    Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.
    book-quoteespionage
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