George Smiley sure knows how to rip a man to pieces:

While Control was no man's child, Percy Alleline was a lowland Scot and a son of the Manse; his father was a Presbyterian hammer, and if Percy did not have his faith, he had surely inherited the faculty of bullish persuasion.  He missed the way by a year or two and joined the Circus from a City company.  At Cambridge he had been a bit of a politician (somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan, said Haydon, who was himself, Lord knows, no milk-and-water liberal) and a bit of an athlete.

from Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (p.130, ch. 16)


So subtle, so understated. It's little flourishes like this that really stand out to me in a book. I also scribbled down a few phrases that I found especially delightful -- lugubrious inevitability, an air of need prevailing over wealth, with a speed which had no place in time.

This guy.