John le Carre Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of John le Carre's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Author John le Carre's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 2 quotes on this page collected since October 19, 1931! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).
  • Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

  • The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom; to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.

    War  
  • I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

    John le Carre (2001). “The Spy Who Came In from the Cold”, p.15, Simon and Schuster
  • Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

  • Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

    John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.24, Simon and Schuster
  • I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

  • I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.

    "John le Carré at the NFT". Interview with Adrian Wootton, www.theguardian.com. October 5, 2002.
  • In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.

  • Love means having something to betray.

  • Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

    "The Mission Song". Book by John le Carre, September 2006.
  • Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

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

    John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.217, Simon and Schuster
  • But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

  • Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. But now your own side is going to shoot you. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?

    War  
  • You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.

    War   Battle   Technique  
    "The Book Show" with Ramona Koval, November 19, 2008.
  • Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

  • Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

    Interviewed with Pip Ayers, Daily Mail's Live Magazine, July 10, 2011.
  • The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.

    "John le Carre: A man of great intelligence" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. October 31, 2009.
  • America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

    War  
    "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.
  • Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

    "Master of the Secret World: John le Carré on Deception, Storytelling and American Hubris" by Andrew Ross, www.salon.com. October 21, 1996.
  • It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

  • Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

  • Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.

    "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.
  • Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.

    John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.192, Simon and Schuster
  • Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.

  • 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.

    The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963). Sounds like some writers.
  • The only reward for love is the experience of loving.

  • There is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

  • It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

    John le Carre (2002). “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy”, p.74, Simon and Schuster
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 2 quotes from the Author John le Carre, starting from October 19, 1931! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!