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Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

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
Great
Whether
Sole
World
Success
Mad
Night
Drive
Else
Lonely
Home
Places
Littles
Coming
Survivors
Ever
Personal
Congratulations
Little
Seen
Survivor

More quotes by John le Carre

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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.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.
John le Carre
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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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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.
John le Carre
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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
John le Carre
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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?
John le Carre
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Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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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.
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.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
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I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre
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Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
John le Carre
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Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
John le Carre
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Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre
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A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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.
John le Carre
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I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.
John le Carre