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

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

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...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.
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Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
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Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.
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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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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
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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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You should have died when I killed you.
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For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.
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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.
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Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
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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.
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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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The cold war provided the perfect excuse for Western governments to plunder and exploit the Third World in the name of freedom to rig its elections, bribe its politicians, appoint its tyrants and, by every sophisticated means of persuasion and interference, stunt the emergence of young democracies in the name of democracy.
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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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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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A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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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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It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.
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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.
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I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
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