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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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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
Made
Responsive
Oriented
Largely
German
Particularly
Century
Education
Literature

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I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
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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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If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.
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If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
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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.
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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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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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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.
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But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
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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?
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I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
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People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.
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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
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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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A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
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I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.
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There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
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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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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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