We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?
John le Carré, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold
espionage, isolation, loneliness, spying