Quote

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

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
Make
Deserted
Like
Mud
Pie
Dust
Street
Walking
Streets
Writing

More quotes by John le Carre

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I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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We've had enough. He took back the report and jammed it under his arm. We've had a bellyful, in fact. And like everyone who's had enough, said Control as Alleline noisily left the room, he wants more.
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For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.
John le Carre
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When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly it's just the beginning.
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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I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
John le Carre
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He has the gift of quiet.
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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As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.
John le Carre
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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
John le Carre
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I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
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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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
John le Carre
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Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
John le Carre
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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
John le Carre
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More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
John le Carre
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In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.
John le Carre
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I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
John le Carre
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It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.
John le Carre