John le Carré Quotes

Walking a short way back along the embankment, almost to where the cross stood, Smiley took another ...

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has on...

Yet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.

Home's where you go when you run out of homes.

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackness, that his life has co...

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head abo...

There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce...

... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or ...

Some men will never be heroes, some heroes will never be men, he thought, with urgent acknowledgemen...

She's become a Russian again, he thought. When something works, she's grateful. When it doesn't work...

Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled...

By what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the m...

A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In its...

This is a war," Lemas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at ...

I would say that since the war, our methods-out and those of the opposition-have become much the sam...

Ashe was typical of that strata of mankind which conducts its human relationships according to a pri...

Don't give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out...

We have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, a...

It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths i...

We've had enough." He took back the report and jammed it under his arm. "We've had a bellyful, in fa...

Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother’s shoulder, stilling he...

I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You wou...

There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have...

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to ...

'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its ...

I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write...

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you t...

Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opini...

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects it...

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonst...

He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doin...

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither,...

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Par...

I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing wha...

In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public per...

If you're growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become a performer and c...

It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely es...

I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress...

You should have died when I killed you.

Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession,...

The vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.

It is only when he speaks German, as now, that he allows himself to lament the enslavement of the wo...

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors ac...

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous

SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates a...

Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average read...

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold ...

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through brib...

I think, increasingly, despite what we are being told is an ever more open world of communication, t...

He has the gift of quiet.

Put it this way, George,” he suggested, when he had savoured the night air for a moment. “You travel...

A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter ...

society is unconcerned with the aftermath of sensation.

He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of y...

Afterwards Smiley always thought of that interview as a fan dance; a calculated progression of discl...

To dream in doctrines, how tidy!

one of those world builders who do othing but destroy,

They might have you, and they pay badly enough to guarantee you decent company.

Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patien...

But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his d...

She had the experience to suffer with discretion.

There comes a moment for all of us when our childhood ceases to be an excuse. In your case, I would ...

All men are born free: just not for long.

I don't break down," she announced. "Got it?"He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed...

When the truth finally catches up to you, don't be a hero and run.

Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Ou...

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

If there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epit...

Gossip till the cows come home.

Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic ...

Some people are agents from birth, Monsignors -- he told them -- appointed to the work by the period...

A lot of people see doubt as legitimate philosophical posture. They think of themselves in the middl...

Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then ...