JOHN LE CARRÉ QUOTES II
British author (1931- )
I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
A Murder of Quality
Without a pen in my hand I can't think.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
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 CARRÉ
Our Kind of Traitor
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People
I was the British spy who had come out of the woodwork and told it how it really was, and anything I said to the contrary only enforced the myth. And since I was writing for a public hooked on Bond and desperate for the antidote, the myth stuck.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Guardian, April 12, 2013
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.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
"The United States of America Has Gone Mad", 2003
He met failure as one day he would probably meet death, with cynical resentment and the courage of a solitary.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, Lost & Found
Betrayal can only happen if you love.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
A Perfect Spy
To possess another language is to possess another soul.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Honourable Schoolboy
No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Mission Song
I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of The Wind in the Willows, which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Looking Glass War
My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak. What I see in my country, progressively over these years, is that the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer. The rich have become indifferent through a philosophy of greed, and the poorer have become hopeless because they're not properly cared for. That's actually something that is happening in many Western societies. Your own, I am told, is not free from it.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion. Fifty years on, I don't associate the book with anything that ever happened to me, save for one wordless encounter at London airport when a worn-out, middle-aged military kind of man in a stained raincoat slammed a handful of mixed foreign change on to the bar and in gritty Irish accents ordered himself as much Scotch as it would buy. In that moment, Alec Leamas was born. Or so my memory, not always a reliable informant, tells me.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Guardian, April 12, 2013
Luck's just another word for destiny ... either you make your own or you're screwed.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
The Mission Song
Blackmail is more effective than bribery.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
Smiley's People