Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Went
Immoral
Rather
Quantum
Every
Suspects
Smiley
Things
Centre
Lavish
Never
Cat
Stray
Concern
Spy
Compassion
Lightly
Theory
Suspect

More quotes by John le Carre

Image
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.
John le Carre
Image
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
John le Carre
Image
If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
John le Carre
Image
Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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.
John le Carre
Image
In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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.
John le Carre
Image
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
John le Carre
Image
Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
John le Carre
Image
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John le Carre
Image
I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
John le Carre