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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.

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
Three
Struck
Unfair
Forty
Solitude
Eight
Bits
Age
Manifested
Sense
Haunted

More quotes by John le Carre

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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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The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.
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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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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.
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Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.
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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 used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
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People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.
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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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Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
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I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.
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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.
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When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly it's just the beginning.
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As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.
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More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
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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.
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Love means having something to betray.
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The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
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The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
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