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When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.
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
Nothing
Threatens
Like
Detail
Irrelevant
Details
Head
Water
Keep
Problem
Engulf
More quotes by John le Carre
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
In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.
John le Carre
The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior
John le Carre
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.
John le Carre
The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.
John le Carre
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
I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
John le Carre
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.
John le Carre
I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.
John le Carre
I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now I wish I could distinguish them.
John le Carre
Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.
John le Carre
More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
John le Carre
I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
John le Carre
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
I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
John le Carre
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
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
For decades to come the spy world will continue to be the collective couch where the subconscious of each nation is confessed.
John le Carre
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
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
John le Carre
