Quotes from Len Deighton

Ich bin ein Berliner,' I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.

I'm not rich enough to do anything I want to do. But I know what you mean; I'm rich enough to avoid doing the things I don't want to do.

Yes,' I said. 'There are trustworthy people in this world, but you have to take such unacceptable risks to find out who they are.

There'll be no trouble, Angel,' I said, giving him the sort of wide smile that I'd seen on carefree men with easy minds.

The established German Army no longer had the physical power to overcome the uniformed private armies of Left and Right. This weakness was not due to a lack of rifles, machine guns, or artillery, or even to a lack of men, but to a shortage of trucks. The vital role of the truck had already been recognized by some military experts. In England Captain B. H. Liddell Hart greeted the six-wheel truck as a landmark in military evolution.

Enrolment is tricky. You are telling lies to highly skilled liars.

It was only a matter of time. The urge to reform the male is something no woman can resist.

but for Daphne, and her neighbours' travels, I would still not know that Finland had a cuisine

I would still not know that Finland had a cuisine, let alone that Kalakukko, a fish pie incorporating spiky bones and heads, was a cherished part of it. So

She said, 'I'll make tea; I'd like a cup myself.' She was very close to me, standing in front of the mirror. She glanced at her reflection as she straightened her hair and smoothed her rumpled nightdress. It was thin, almost transparent, and the light was shining through it. 'Come here, duchess,' I said. 'I don't feel like tea just yet.

I've been taking things too seriously for years,' I said. 'I'm afraid it makes me a difficult man to live with. But I've stayed alive, sweetheart. And that means a lot to me.

Life is worth nothing, life is worth nothing, It always starts with crying and with crying ends. And that's why, in this world, life is worth nothing.

Berlin is a sort of history book of twentieth-century violence, and every street corner brought a recollection of something I'd heard, seen, or read. We followed the road alongside the Landwehr Canal, which twists and turns through the heart of the city. Its oily water holds many dark secrets.

Like all women she was tyrannized by her biology.

What chance did I stand between the Communists on one side and the Establishment on the other

I hurt, therefore I am.

The only thing a man has to know about women is that he'll never know anything about them.

Keith Park was a popular and persuasive man. He had quelled a near mutiny in 1918 by assembling the airmen and talking to them on random subjects and in such a monotonous voice for so long that all rebelliousness was destroyed by fatigue.

Dicky Cruyer ran a finger along the waist of his white denim jeans until he felt the designer's leather label on his back pocket.

being always prepared for an engagement with the Italian fleet. It was an almost impossible undertaking. The Balkan campaigns Having crossed the Adriatic Sea and occupied Albania, Mussolini looked greedily at its neighbour Greece. The Greek dictator General Ioannis Metaxas was a Fascist and pro-Axis in sentiment. Mussolini thought the Greek population, if not

Parker had acquired the North American habit of making his demands sound like polite inquiries.

There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and already the level was down as far as the label. 'Are we celebrating something?' I asked as I took off my coat and hung it in the hall. 'Don't be so bloody bourgeois,' said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.

And that's all you would have got under the American or British system of first-past-the-post,' said Lottie. 'It was proportional representation that inflated your gains.

Breslow!' Stein's voice was so loud that it made the thin hardboard walls of the dressing room rattle as they echoed back the sound of it. 'Breslow!' It was more like a cry for help than a threat. 'Breslow!' shouted Stein again. He was beginning to realize that Max Breslow controlled a thousand Führers.