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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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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
Think
Committee
Thinking
Committees
Interfere
Dread
Watched
Usually
Movie
Wrong
Interfering

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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
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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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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 fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
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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.
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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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When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.
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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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I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.
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Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.
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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
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I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.
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Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
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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 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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And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
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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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Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
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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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