A Small Town in Germany Quotes

“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 Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“That’s the point, isn’t it: the opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s lethargy.”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“The opposite of love is not hate but apathy”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“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 Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“They had met at oxford; she had taken a better degree than Avery. But somehow marriage had made her childish; dependence had become an attitude, as if she had given him something irredeemable, and were always asking for it back. Her son was less her projection than her excuse; a wall against the world and not a channel to it.”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“But, then, never forget that diplomats are amateurs. They are not politicians, they are not trained analysts or economists or sociologists or lawyers or historians – certainly the British variety aren’t. They are for the most part Oxbridge Arts men posing as local experts, and often quite as wrong-headed as you might expect.”
― John Le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“An archivist is like an historian; he has time-periods he’s faddy about; places, Kings and Queens. All the files here are related, they’re bound to be. Give me any file from next door; any file you want, I could trace you a path clean through the whole Registry, from Icelandic shipping rights to the latest guidance on gold prices. That’s the fascination of files; there’s nowhere to stop.”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“No one thanks you for shaving, no one thanks you for democracy. Now we’ve come out the other side. Democracy was only possible under a class system, that’s why: it was an indulgence granted by the privileged. We haven’t time for it any more: a flash of light between feudalism and automation, and now it’s gone. What’s left? The voters are cut off from parliament, parliament”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“what”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“The most effective deceit is the one which is never discovered.”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany

“That’s the trouble with Americans, isn’t it, really? All that emphasis on the future. So dangerous. It makes them destructive of the present.”
― John le Carré, A Small Town in Germany