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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
Back
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Feel
Writers
Feels
Green
Way
Childhood
Think
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Graham
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Alienated

More quotes by John le Carre

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He has the gift of quiet.
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History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.
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I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?
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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.
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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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Love means having something to betray.
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There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
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There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
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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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All men are born free: just not for long.
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There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.
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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.
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Out of date, perhaps, but who wasn't these days? Out of date, but loyal to his own time. At a certain moment, after all, every man chooses: will he go forward, will he go back? There was nothing dishounorable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
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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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Agents of disruption, subversion, sabotage and disinformation tunnelers and smugglers, listeners and forgers, trainers and recruiters and talent spotters and couriers and watchers and seducers, assassins and balloonists, lip readers and disguise artists.
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Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.
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I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
John le Carre
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Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
John le Carre
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Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
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It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
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