Quote

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

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
Hand
Literature
Write
Happens
Hands
Writing
Even
Type
Happen

More quotes by John le Carre

Image
It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.
John le Carre
Image
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
John le Carre
Image
Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
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
There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
John le Carre
Image
Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.
John le Carre
Image
When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
John le Carre
Image
He has the gift of quiet.
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
Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre
Image
Every writer knows he is spurious every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
John le Carre
Image
A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middle, whereas of course really, they're nowhere.
John le Carre
Image
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
Image
It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
Image
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
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
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
John le Carre
Image
Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
John le Carre
Image
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
John le Carre
Image
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre