John le Carr in quotes
- John le Carré died aged 89 on Saturday in Cornwall
- Le Carré was known for his cold war spy thrillers
- He was ranked 22 by Times London on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
John le Carré in quotes:
“Intelligence work has one moral law — it is justified by results.”- “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1963).
“Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”- Adrian Haldane, in “The Looking Glass War” (1965).
“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”- “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (1974).
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”- “The Honourable Schoolboy” (1977).
“You are a perfect spy. All you need is a cause.”- Axel, the Czech spymaster, addressing Magnus Pym, in “A Perfect Spy” (1986).
“Now we had defeated Communism, we were going to have to set about defeating capitalism.”- Ned, the main character in “The Secret Pilgrim” (1990).
“America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.”- Commentary by le Carré in the Times newspaper in January 2003 in the buildup to the Iraq War.
“Apart from spying, I have in my time sold bathtowels, got divorced, washed elephants, run away from school, decimated a flock of Welsh sheep with a twenty-five pound shell because I was too stupid to understand the gunnery officer’s instructions, taught children in a special school.”- From the author’s website.
“I was asked so many times why I chose this ridiculous name, then the writer’s imagination came to my help. I saw myself riding over Battersea Bridge, on top of a bus, looking down at a tailor’s shop… And it was called something of this sort — le Carré. That satisfied everybody for years. But lies don’t last with age. I find a frightful compulsion towards truth these days. And the truth is, I don’t know.”- Interview with The Paris Review, 1996.
“I hate the telephone. I can’t type. I ply my trade by hand. I live on a Cornish cliff and hate cities. Three days and nights in a city are about my maximum.”- From the author’s website.
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