A Perfect Spy Quotes

“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

“You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.”
― 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

“If love is whatever we can still betray, remember that I betrayed you on a lot of days.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“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

“The privileged English assets of good manners and bad learning have never been more to his advantage”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Against the wall the old black and white television, and the agonising sofa for watching it. "There's nothing like a little discomfort," Magnus liked to say, primly, "for deciding whether a program is worth its salt.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“photographs of her bearded brother and solemn sisters in black hats and silver frames which stood like tiny polished gravestones on her dressing-table.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“And what am I thinking? I am thinking that a man who cannot speak clearly cannot think clearly.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“A vida tem de ser paga. A vida é fazer-se o que tem de ser feito, mesmo que se morra por causa disso.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Sometimes, Tom, 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

“Let each be the mistress that keeps the other home intact,”
― John Le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“He’s the Pym who can’t rest till he’s touched the love in people, then can’t rest till he’s hacked his way out of it, the more drastically the better. The Pym who does nothing cynically, nothing without conviction. Who sets events in motion in order to become their victim, which he calls decision, and ties himself into pointless relationships, which he calls loyalty. Then waits for the next event to get him out of the last one, which he calls destiny.”
― John Le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“peace in the spirit of Joe Stalin who, let’s face it, Titch, and nothing against your dad ever, won the war for all these capitalist bastards.”
― John Le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“I say, Pymmie, there’s some ghastly group of physicists visiting the Livermore weapons laboratory next month,” you would say, all apology and diffidence. “You don’t think you could pop down there and feed and water a few of them and see they don’t blow their noses on the tablecloth, could you? Why on earth this service has to behave like a lot of flat-footed security officers these days, I really don’t know. I’ve a good mind to do a letter to London about it, if I can squeeze a moment.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Today of course I know the poor souls for what they were: members of that large, lost family of the British unprofessional classes that seems to wander by right between the secret services, the automobile clubs and the richer private charities. Not bad men by any means. Not dishonest men. Not stupid. But men who see the threat to their class as synonymous with the threat to England and never wandered far enough to know the difference.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“God’s waiting room’ is what they call Palm Springs. It has one swimming pool for every five inhabitants, and lies a couple of hours’ drive from the biggest killing factories in the world. Its industries are charity and death.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Baptists do not kneel before God, Tom.”
― 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

“תמיד יש ברנש אחד גבוה יותר בסולם, לא, סר מגנוס? אפילו כשנדמה לך שאתה בפסגה. ואח"כ, כשאתה כבר מגיע לפסגה, אתה מוצא אותם שוב מתחתיך, ממטירים מהלומות על מגפיך. ככה זה בשיטה כשלנו.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Yes, well, I always assume that businessmen are crooks, don't you, Harry? I'm sure we all do.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Yet in diplomacy nothing lasts, nothing is absolute, a conspiracy to murder is no grounds for endangering the flow of conversation.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“When two people have decided to go to bed with each other, what passes between them before the event is a matter of form rather than of content.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“Mas em diplomacia nada é duradouro, nada é absoluto e uma conspiração entre assassinos não é motivo para interromper o fluxo da conversa”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy