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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

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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
Become
Reach
Fades
May
Childhood
Cheat
Ever
However
Plane
Detachment
Parents
Planes
Fade
Wise
Pretend
Regarding
Parent
Monsters
Monstrous
Experience
Otherwise
Cheating
Away
Neither
Wholly

More quotes by John le Carre

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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.
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When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
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I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
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There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
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In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
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Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
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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.
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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.
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The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
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There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.
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...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.
John le Carre
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Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
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Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.
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I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
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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.
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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 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.
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If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.
John le Carre