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I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

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
Library
Second
Hand
Reading
Hands
Book
Really
Men
Librarian

More quotes by John le Carre

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The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
John le Carre
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The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John le Carre
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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
John le Carre
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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
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Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
John le Carre
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There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
John le Carre
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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
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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.
John le Carre
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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
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What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.
John le Carre
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The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
John le Carre
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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
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When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.
John le Carre
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But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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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.
John le Carre
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I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
John le Carre