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But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

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
State
Bigs
States
Totalitarian
West
Difference
Differences
Working

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Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
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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.
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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.
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In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.
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Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
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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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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
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Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
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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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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
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The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story.
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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.
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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 greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior
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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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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.
John le Carre
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All men are born free: just not for long.
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I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
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There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
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