Иван Жилин > Иван's Quotes

“The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.”
― Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

“When you're five and you hurt, you make a big noise in the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain.”
― Stephen King, Rage

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“That's what happens with undergraduate friendships. What was charming twenty-five years ago becomes a pest. You grow up. Your friends don't. You adjust. They stay the same. They become old kids, then they become bores. That's when you switch off.”
― John le Carré, Our Game

“In the beginning was not the word, not the deed, not the silly serpent. In the beginning was why?”
― John le Carré, The Russia House

“That’s what I do. I bewitch people, then the moment they’re under my spell I cease to feel anything for them.”
― John le Carré, The Russia House

“Spying is waiting. Spying is worrying. Spying is being yourself but more so.”
― John le Carré, The Russia House

“You’ll just have to take our word for it.’ ‘Your Service’s word?’ ‘For the time being, yes.’ ‘On the strength of what? Aren’t you supposed to be the gentlemen who lie for the good of their country?’ ‘That’s diplomats. We’re not gentlemen.’ ‘So you lie to save your hides.’ ‘That’s politicians. Different game entirely.”
― John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor

“It’s like the old Soviet joke we used to tell each other back in the Cold War: there’ll be no war, but in the struggle for peace, not a stone will be left standing.”
― John le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor

“I loathe weddings. I consider them unnatural and insulting. Every time I attend one, I see another good woman go to the wall.” “How about the poor bloody groom?” “As far as I’m concerned, the poor bloody groom is the wall.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“We don’t ask him to become a traitor. We offer him a new definition of loyalty.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“It’s an ordinary fountain pen, Lantern had said. It looks like a pen, writes like a pen, listens like a pen. If they take it apart, it’s still an ordinary fountain pen.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“I wasn't there, it was two other blokes, she hit me first and it was with her consent, Your Honour.”
― John le Carré, The Tailor of Panama

“We're talking high-tech, mid-tech, low-tech and bugger-all-tech.”
― John le Carré, The Night Manager

“There's no such thing as a decision. There never was. There's whether you've had a good day or a bad day, there's going forward because there's nothing behind and running because if you stand still any longer you'll fall over.”
― John le Carré, The Night Manager

“Other countries, pots of money, mad for high tech, nothing else will do, got to be like the fellow next door. Not like him. Better than. Miles better. They want the smart bomb that gets into the lift, goes to the third floor, turns left, clears its throat, blows up the master of the house but doesn't hurt the television set.”
― John le Carré, The Night Manager

“It’s the new millennium. People must be allowed to screw up their lives as they see fit.”
― John le Carré, The Constant Gardener

“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 Carré, A Perfect Spy

“In life, says Proust, we end up doing whatever we do second best.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Is she married?” “You know I don’t sleep with married women unless they absolutely insist.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“She was my—? I never knew what to call her. To say she was my girlfriend was absurd; no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriend. Partner wasn’t right either, as we didn’t live under the same roof. Lover? How could one keep a straight face? Mistress? Do me a favor. Fiancée? Certainly not. I suppose I ought to have realized it was ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.”
― Robert Harris, The Ghost

“It’s like interviewing a new cleaner. Do you want someone who can give you the history of cleaning and the theory of cleaning, or do you want someone who’ll just get down and clean your fucking house? They chose you because they think you’ll clean their fucking house.”
― Robert Harris, The Ghost

“I know the internet is the stuff a paranoiac’s dreams are made of.”
― Robert Harris, The Ghost

“Do you think we do not understand that your politics are the externalisation of a search for dimensions and responses not supplied to you when you most needed them? We're your friends, Charlie.”
― John le Carré, The Little Drummer Girl

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

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

“He is a man capable of turning any colour into grey.”
― John le Carré

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
― Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

“He caught Kin's eye and grinned again. Joel often grinned. Palaeolithic genes had somehow met again at his conception, and a slab face like Joel's had to smile frequently lest it frighten small children. When his face brightened it was like the dawn of Man. They spoke, and not merely with words. Between them they were 400 years old. Now words were mere flatcars on which towered cargoes of nuance and expression.”
― Terry Pratchett, Strata

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time