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

More quotes by 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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All men are born free: just not for long.
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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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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
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Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.
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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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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Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
John le Carre
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A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.
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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Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
John le Carre
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Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.
John le Carre
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On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.
John le Carre
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There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John le Carre
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
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I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
John le Carre
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In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre