London Match
Author: Len Deighton
Release: October 1, 1985
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Genre: Fiction, Spy Fiction, Espionage
ISBN-10: 0091618908
ISBN-13: 978-0091618902
Main Character: A Bernard Samson Adventure
Synopsis: The final part of the Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match trilogy.
Declassified by Agent Palmer: No ‘Match’ for conclusion to Deighton’s first Samson trilogy
Quotes and Lines
“The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change. Both are invariably disappointed.”
“It’s all politics,” I said calmly. “Espionage is about politics. Remove the politics and you don’t need espionage or any of the paraphernalia of it.”
Before pouring the wine, Silas lectured us about it. Chȃteau Palmer 1961, he said, was the finest claret he’d ever tasted, the finest perhaps of this century. He still hovered, looking at the wine in the antique decanter as if now wondering whether it would be wasted on the present company.
It was the sort of untidy room in which you’d expect to find a writer or even a “journalist.” There were crowded bookshelves, a desk with an old manual typewriter, and more books and papers piled on the floor. But Lange had not been a professional writer for many years, and even in his newspaper days he’d never been a man who referred to books except as a last resort. Lange had never been a journalist; Lange had always been a streetwise reporter who got his facts at firsthand and guessed the bits in between
“It’s going to be a Jewish Christmas, is it? What’s he serving you–gefilte fish and turkey noodle soup?”
“And who pays him?”
“He’s not for sale, Bernard.”
“Then it’s no one I know, “ I said.”
“If ever you wanted to prove that there is no relationship between effort and reward in this world, you’ve only got to read the life of Mozart.”
“You don’t even have to do that,” I said. “You can come and work in my office and find that out.”
For the womanizer is destructive, the rock upon which desperate women dash themselves to pieces.
“There’s no one in the German Section with field experience comparable to yours. You’re bright as hell, despite your lack of proper schooling and the chip you have on your shoulder about it. For most things concerning the German Section, you’ve got your own unofficial sources of information, and often you dig out material that no one else can get. You are straight. You make up your own mind, and you write your reports without giving a damn what anyone wants to hear.” Bret on Bernard
“There’s so much paperwork. If we didn’t bend the rules now and again, we’d never get everything done.” – Gloria to Bernard
“Ahhhh.” Ted’s yawn was a symptom of anxiety. For all God’s creatures, fear brings a drowsiness, a self-preserving urge to snuggle down somewhere out of sight and go to sleep.
Time used to be the panacea for everything, but nowadays our sins are remembered on computers, and random-accessed memories do not fade.
“To appease their social conscience they’ll turn over men and women to the torture chambers. What sine they are!”
“Perhaps they do what they think is right,” I said. I didn’t exactly believe it, but that was the only way I could do my job. I couldn’t start thinking I was part of a struggle of good against evil or freedom against tyranny. The only way I could work was to concentrate on the nuts and bolts of the job and do it as well as I could.
“But there’s more to be gained from giving bad advice when the result is a triumph, than from giving good advice when the outcome is a near disaster.”