Richard Burton: Alec Leamas
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Quotes
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Alec Leamas : It was a foul, foul operation, but it paid off.
Nan Perry : Who for?
Alec Leamas : What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not! They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me: little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? Yesterday I would have killed Mundt because I thought him evil and an enemy. But not today. Today he is evil and my friend. London needs him. They need him so that the great, moronic masses you admire so much can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again. They need him for the safety of ordinary, crummy people like you and me...
Nan Perry : You killed Fiedler!
Alec Leamas : How big does a cause have to be before you kill your friends? What about your Party? There's a few million bodies on that path!
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Alec Leamas : She offered me free love. At the time, that was all I could afford.
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Control : We have to live without sympathy, don't we? We can't do that forever. One can't stay out of doors all the time. One needs to come in from the cold.
Alec Leamas : I'm an operator, Control, just an operator.
Control : There's a vacancy in Banking Section which might suit you.
Alec Leamas : Sorry, I'm an operational man. I'll take my pension. I don't want a desk job.
Control : You don't know what's on the desk.
Alec Leamas : Paper!
Control : [after taking a long sip from his tea cup] I want you to stay, uh, out in the cold... a little longer.
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Alec Leamas : [Yawns]
Peters : Tired?
Alec Leamas : Aren't you?
Peters : No, I didn't have any drink with my supper.
Alec Leamas : I didn't have any supper with my drink.
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Nan Perry : What was my part in all this? I want to know.
Alec Leamas : You were a pawn in the plot. London knew it was no good just killing Fiedler. If he'd been killed, people would've started asking by whom and why. Maybe he'd told friends he suspected Mundt. Maybe he'd left notes, incriminating notes. London had to eliminate suspicion. Public rehabilitation, that's what they organized for Mundt. I was sent to discredit him. He was sent to discredit me.
Nan Perry : And love?
Alec Leamas : We made it very easy for them. They used us. They cheated us both because it was necessary. Fiedler was nearly home already. If it hadn't been for us, Mundt would have been killed. They were bloody clever. All the way down the line they were bloody clever.
Nan Perry : Clever? They were foul! How can you turn the world upside down? What rules are you playing?
Alec Leamas : There's only one rule: expediency. Mundt gives London what it needs, so Fiedler dies and Mundt lives.
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Alec Leamas : I reserve the right to be ignorant. That's the Western way of life.
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Alec Leamas : Mundt was a Nazi, wasn't he?
Fiedler : He was a member of the Hitler Youth... as a boy.
Alec Leamas : Now he's a grown-up Communist. He's what I would call... available.
Fiedler : Like you!... Shall we begin? Let me start by asking you an amusing question.
Alec Leamas : Let me start by asking you one! Make you laugh your head off! Where's my money? When can I go wherever... wherever home is? I mean, Carleton's gone home! Peters has gone home! What about me?
Fiedler : The agreement was...
Alec Leamas : Agreement!... You've broken the bloody agreement and barring miracles you've broken my bloody neck too! The agreement was that I should be interrogated for two weeks in Holland, paid, and allowed to slip quietly back to England without anyone knowing I'd ever been away. And nobody would have known if you hadn't broken the story.
Fiedler : Just who the hell do you think you are? How dare you come stepping in here like Napoleon ordering me about? You are a traitor! Does it occur to you? A wanted, spent, dishonest man, the lowest currency of the Cold War? We buy you - we sell you - we lose you - we even can shoot you! Not a bird would stir in the trees outside. Not a single pheasant would turn his head to see what fell.
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Alec Leamas : I'm a man, you fool. Don't you understand? A plain, simple, muddled, fat-headed human being. We have them in the West, you know.
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Alec Leamas : [to Fiedler] If ever I have to break your neck, I promise to do it with a minimum of force. Now, when do I get my bloody money?
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Miss Crail : Is your handwriting legible?
Alec Leamas : Except on weekends.
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Nan Perry : Well, they returned you to me. I'm so grateful. So grateful! I cut tonight's party meeting.
Alec Leamas : Oh, well, well! Thank you for putting me above history.
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Alec Leamas : [to Nan] All right, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what you were never, never to know. Mundt is London's man. He's their agent. They bought him while he was in England. We're witnessing the lousy end to a filthy, lousy operation to save Mundt's skin... to save him from a clever little Jew in Mundt's own department who had begun to suspect the truth. London made us kill him, kill the Jew. Now you know. God help us both.
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Ashe : [Approaching Leamas who is sitting on a bench] Do you like birds? The ones with the white collars are wild. The others are domesticated. With people it's the other way around.
Alec Leamas : [He snickers]
Ashe : Bird-watching's one of my hobbies. I often come here.
Alec Leamas : Do you also often come to Wormwood Scrubs Prison at eight o'clock in the morning to watch birds?
Ashe : Yes, jailbirds. They're my other hobby.
Alec Leamas : Only the young ones, surely!
