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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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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
Enemy
Absolution
Alive
Alter
Asks
Beaten
Thought
Regret
Power
Late
Way
Dead
Men
Worst
Love
Ways

More quotes by John le Carre

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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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I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
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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.
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It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.
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Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
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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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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
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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.
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Love means having something to betray.
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The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior
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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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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
John le Carre
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I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.
John le Carre
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I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no-one else can make them.
John le Carre
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For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.
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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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.
John le Carre
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I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
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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The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
John le Carre