"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

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."
— 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)

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes"
— John le Carré

"The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous"
— John le Carré

"Waking and sleeping she had demanded to know where she belonged in a white man's world, and how and where she should invest her ambition and her humanity"
— 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

"He has his chin on his chest and his eyes down. He is thinking of his new baby, his new novel, tomorrow's dance contest. He is thinking of everything except what he is thinking about. "
— John le Carré (Absolute Friends)

"The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal."
— John le Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

"...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 Carré (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

"a desk is a dangerous place to view the world."
— John le Carré

"A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger."
— John le Carré

"I honestly do wonder, without wishing to be morbid, how I reached this present pass. So far as I can ever remember of my youth, I chose the secret road because it seemed to lead straightest and furthest toward my... goal... Today, all I know is that I have learned to interpret the whole of life in terms of conspiracy... These people terrify me, but I am one of them. If they stab me in the back, then at least that is the judgement of my peers."
— 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)

"You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days."
— John le Carré (The Constant Gardener)

"Then he saw her: her disreputable car shunting towards him down the lane marked 'Buses Only' and Ann at the wheel staring the wrong way.
Saw her get out, leaving the indicator winking, and walk into the station to enquire: tall and puckish, extraordinarily beautiful, essentially another man's woman."
— John le Carré