Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
John le Carre
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Eton
Criminality
Experiences
Teaching
Father
Two
More quotes by John le Carre
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.
John le Carre
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
John le Carre
It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?
John le Carre
For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict.
John le Carre
The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John le Carre
I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.
John le Carre
On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.
John le Carre
But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
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
Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.
John le Carre
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
Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
John le Carre
It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.
John le Carre
...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.
John le Carre
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
I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
John le Carre
Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.
John le Carre
I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.
John le Carre
You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty.
John le Carre
