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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
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
Suspicion
Survival
Infinite
Capacity
More quotes by John le Carre
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
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.
John le Carre
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
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.
John le Carre
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
But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
John le Carre
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John le Carre
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
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
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
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
I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
John le Carre
There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
John le Carre
I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.
John le Carre
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
John le Carre
Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
John le Carre
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
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
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
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.
John le Carre