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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

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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
Thinking
Writer
Dictum
Another
Graham
Remember
Alienated
Back
Bank
Feel
Writers
Feels
Green
Way
Childhood
Think
Balance

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Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
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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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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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Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
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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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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
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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.
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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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A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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The one thing you can bet is that spying is never over. Spying is like the wiring in this building: It's just a question of who takes it over and switches on the lights. It will go on and on and on.
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Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
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Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
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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.
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You should have died when I killed you.
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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.
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The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
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I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
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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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As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.
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