Le Carre Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Le Carre

Le Carre Quotes & Sayings

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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

Let's die of it before we're too old. — John Le Carre

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage]. — John Le Carre

The monstrosity of this, reaching Smiley through a thickening wall of spiritual exhaustion, left him momentarily speechless. — John Le Carre

The pharmaceutical corporations are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country — John Le Carre

It was simpler in those days. We could say they'd died for their country. We didn't have to tell them the details; they didn't expect that. — John Le Carre

John Le Carre said that authenticity is less important than plausibility. — Gordon R. Dickson

Every man has his personal devil waiting for him somewhere. — 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

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

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

The striver in him knew that his first aim must be to rise in the system he dreamed of liberating. — John Le Carre

But gossip must see its characters in black and white, equip them with sins and motives easily conveyed in the shorthand of conversation. — John Le Carre

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed. — 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

He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included. — John Le Carre

He has the gift of quiet. — John Le Carre

A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul. — John Le Carre

In capitalist America economic repression of the masses is institutionalised to a point which not even Lenin could have foreseen . . . "The — John Le Carre

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction. — John Le Carre

You can't eat politics, you can't sell them, and you can't sleep with them,' Drake liked to say. So you might as well make money out of them. — John Le Carre

You should have died when I killed you. — John Le Carre

If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself. — John Le Carre

People are very secretive - secret even from themselves. — John Le Carre

The only reward for love is the experience of loving. — John Le Carre

Odd," he remarked finally. "One has no sense of shock. Why is that, Peter? You know me. Why is it? — John Le Carre

For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict. — John Le Carre

By the by, he is a virgin, about eight feet tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge. Do not be alarmed. — John Le Carre

Information is not knowledge, mind you. — John Le Carre

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services. — John Le Carre

You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause. — John Le Carre

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him. — John Le Carre

Austerity pleased her - it gave her the comfort of sacrifice. — John Le Carre

The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one. — John Le Carre

You just happened to put your hand to your face and find it damp and you wondered what the hell Christ bothered to die for, if He ever died at all. — John Le Carre

Over them, in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note. — John Le Carre

But we progress, Your Graces. Inexorably we progress. Albeit at the blind man's speed, as we tap-tap along in the dark. — John Le Carre

Charlie alone knew he was a ghost. — John Le Carre

It was his shoes, he noticed to his pleasure, that she most objected to; and he thought: bloody good, that's what shoes are for. — John Le Carre

To give the best of the day to your work is most important. — John Le Carre

Few men can resist expressing their appetites when they're making a fantasy about themselves. — John Le Carre

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery ... — John Le Carre

America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember. — John Le Carre

The easiest and cheapest trick for any leader is to take his country to war on false pretenses. — John Le Carre

She's become a Russian again, he thought. When something works, she's grateful. When it doesn't work, it's life. — John Le Carre

Writing doesn't get easier. Every novel is a first novel. — John Le Carre

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that. — John Le Carre

He's going to save the world before he leaves it if it kills him. — John Le Carre

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

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers. — John Le Carre

They would expect him to be afraid; for his service pursued traitors as the eye of God followed Cain across the desert. — John Le Carre

It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three. — John Le Carre

There was only now [ ... ] There was no tomorrow because tomorrow was the excuse. There was now or there was nowhere. — John Le Carre

Intelligence work has one moral law - it is justified by results. — John Le Carre

Blackmail is more effective than bribery. — John Le Carre

You give the air of looking for someone, Sophie had said. But I think the missing person is yourself. Each — John Le Carre

Spying is waiting. — John Le Carre

If a decade of diplomatic life had taught Toby one thing, it was to treat every crisis as normal and soluble. — John Le Carre

Power sits uneasily on those one has grown up with. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Spy. — John Le Carre

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. — John Le Carre

I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with. — John Le Carre

They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company. — John Le Carre

Who's an ex-diplomat of all people to complain if the wrapping is prettier than what's inside? — John Le Carre

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way. — John Le Carre

Todd and Larry were Quinn's people. They were clean-limbed and pretty and, for a man of my age, ludicrously youthful. — John Le Carre

he asked, in a more tentative tone, "What's the — 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

During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity. — John Le Carre

He met failure as one day he would probably meet death, with cynical resentment and the courage of a solitary. — John Le Carre

Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage. — John Le Carre

I had been playing Shostakovich on the stereo, but without conviction. — John Le Carre

More cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paid-up pessimist, he knew he had none. — John Le Carre

I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price. — John Le Carre

I write and walk and swim and drink. — John Le Carre

They loved each other and believed they loved mankind, they fought each other and believed they fought the world. — John Le Carre

The most peaceble people will do the most terrible things when they're pushed. — John Le Carre

I know their unstinted devotion to the free-market economy, provided it's their freedom and somebody else's economy. — John Le Carre

Promise to build a chap a house, he won't believe you. Threaten to burn his place down, he'll do what you tell him. Fact of life. — John Le Carre

We pretend a lot of things aren't there. Or we pretend that other things are more important. That's how we survive. — John Le Carre

Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong. — John Le Carre

Think I'll just buff up the silver,' he announced, loud enough for her to hear and do something about him if she wanted. — John Le Carre

However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing. — John Le Carre

It comforted the great to deal with it and they knew, a man who could reduce any color to grey. — John Le Carre

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic. — John Le Carre

The driver was holding open the rear door. He was young and blond, a boy in his prime. — John Le Carre

But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy. — John Le Carre

Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray. — John Le Carre

Let us honour if we can the vertical man, though we value none but the horizontal one. Or — John Le Carre

Home's where you go when you run out of homes. — 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

Writers are two-home men - they want a place outside and a place within. — John Le Carre

These dons, so ponderous, so circuitous, , no sense of time. In a minute they'll be talking about the meaning of meaning. — John Le Carre

He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year. — John Le Carre

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water. — John Le Carre

Never confess, my friend," he advised drowsily, clasping Melik's hand. "If you confess, they will keep you there forever. — John Le Carre

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead. — John Le Carre

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. — John Le Carre

Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West. — John Le Carre

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: Theatrical Trailer (Courtesy of Focus — John Le Carre

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can. — John Le Carre