Quote

There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.

John le Carre

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Writer
Novel
Impossible
Writing
Thing
Every
Secure
Mountain

More quotes by John le Carre

Image
There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John le Carre
Image
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
John le Carre
Image
For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.
John le Carre
Image
I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
John le Carre
Image
Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly it's just the beginning.
John le Carre
Image
When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
All power corrupts but some must govern.
John le Carre
Image
Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
John le Carre
Image
Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre
Image
We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
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.
John le Carre
Image
All men are born free: just not for long.
John le Carre
Image
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.
John le Carre
Image
Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
Love means having something to betray.
John le Carre