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

More quotes by John le Carre

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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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The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
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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.
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All power corrupts but some must govern.
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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.
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Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.
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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.
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I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.
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All men are born free: just not for long.
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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.
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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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It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.
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I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
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There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
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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.
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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
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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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There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
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When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.
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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.
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