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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.

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
Cold
Changed
Differences
Islam
Fighting
Radical
Bigs
Rules
War
Havens
Haven
Difference

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What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?
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I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
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Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.
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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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Wives? she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, None active, as if wives were volcanoes.
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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
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Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
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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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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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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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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
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And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
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I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
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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.
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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.
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Love means having something to betray.
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I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.
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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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There is no such thing as a secure writer: every novel is an impossible mountain.
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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
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