Quote

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.

John le Carre

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John le Carre
Age: 89 †
Born: 1931
Born: October 19
Died: 2020
Died: December 12
Actor
Film Producer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Spy
Writer
Sweetwater
Texas
David John Moore Cornwell
David Cornwell
John le Carre
History
Confidence
Sometimes
Nobody
Needs
Longer
Winners
Lose
Reveal
Loses
Secrets
Greatest
Winner
Secret
Tonight
Literature
Keeps

More quotes by John le Carre

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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
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I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.
John le Carre
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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
John le Carre
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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
John le Carre
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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
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The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John le Carre
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The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
John le Carre
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But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.
John le Carre
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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 Carre
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Wives? she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, None active, as if wives were volcanoes.
John le Carre
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I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
John le Carre
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
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In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.
John le Carre
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Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
John le Carre
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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
John le Carre
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Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
John le Carre
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Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
John le Carre
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All power corrupts but some must govern.
John le Carre
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There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
John le Carre
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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