John le Carre Quotes - Page 3

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• I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.

  John le Carre

  Thinking, Bankers, Get Away

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• Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

  John le Carre

  Not Happy, Shots

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• How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

  John le Carre

  Believe, Two, America

  2003 In Time, 27 Jan.

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• Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.

  John le Carre

  Real, Writing, Artist

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• What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.

  John le Carre

  Thinking, Cowboy, Play

  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Sounds like some writers.

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• The good pupils are often brilliant, and they keep you on your toes and take you to the limits of your knowledge. The worst pupils provide a unique insight into the criminal mind.

  John le Carre

  Unique, Mind, Criminals

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• People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.

  John le Carre

  Wise, Thinking, People

  John le Carre (2005). “The Constant Gardener: A Novel”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

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• It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.

  John le Carre

  Eight, Should Have, Solitude

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• Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishounorable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.

  John le Carre

  Men, Wind, Generations

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• Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

  John le Carre

  Writing, Dust, Pie

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• In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.

  John le Carre

  Hands, Design, Misery

  John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.217, Simon and Schuster

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• A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.

  John le Carre

  Regret, Men, Worst Enemy

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• I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

  John le Carre

  Thinking, People, Creative

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• Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.

  John le Carre

  Average, People, Spy

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• Life was to be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.

  John le Carre

  Encounters

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• Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.

  John le Carre

  Spy, Matter, Habit

  John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.377, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

  John le Carre

  Heart, Angel, Self

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• The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.

  John le Carre

  Childhood, Monsters, Detachment

  "John le Carré: A man of great intelligence" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. October 31, 2009.

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• America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.

  John le Carre

  America, Literature, Madness

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• You should have died when I killed you.

  John le Carre

  Should Have, Literature, Should

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• By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

  John le Carre

  Cutting, Age, Way

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• We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

  John le Carre

  Years, Political, Spy

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• Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

  John le Carre

  Humility, Men, Common Sense

  John le Carre (2002). “Call for the Dead”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

  John le Carre

  Names, Done, Dare

  "British Novelist John le Carré on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa and His New Novel, "Our Kind of Traitor". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. November 25, 2010.

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• All men are born free: just not for long.

  John le Carre

  Men, Long, Born

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