John le Carré > Quotes

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
― John le Carré

“Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.”
― John le Carré

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“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 Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
― John le Carré, The Looking Glass War

“There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous”
― John le Carré

“By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.”
― John le Carré

“The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.”
― John le Carré

“I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat's mat is a story.”
― John le Carré

“Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.”
― John le Carré

“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.”
― John le Carré, The Constant Gardener

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.”
― John le Carré

“Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes”
― John le Carré

“Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“You should have died when I killed you.”
― John le Carré

“Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.”
― John le Carré

“There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing. ”
― John le Carré, Absolute Friends

“Let's die of it before we're too old.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.”
― John le Carré

“There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“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 Carré

“People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.”
― John le Carré

“George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge”
― John le Carré

“Everyone who is not happy must be shot.”
― John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl

“Only Esmeralda was not weeping. Instead she wore that wooden look that whites mistake for churlishenss or indifference. Woodrew knew it was neither. It was familiarity. This how real life is constituted, it said. This is grief and hatred and people hacked to death. This is the everyday we have known since we were born and you Wazungu have not.”
― John le Carré

“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 Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy