Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way. "
John le Carre
Own
Knew
Age
Related Quotes:
" The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London. "
John le Carre
Service
London
Park
" You should have died when I killed you. "
John le Carre
You
Should
Died
" I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering. "
John le Carre
Know
Not Knowing
Scared
" SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6, also has no executive powers and operates abroad on CIA lines, but with a tiny percentage of the budget and a tiny percentage of the personnel. "
John le Carre
Intelligence
Service
Budget
" The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible. "
John le Carre
Credible
Spy
Where
" When you are brought up as a frozen child, you go on freezing. It wasn't until I had my four sons, who have brought me immense joy, that I began to thaw. That I realised how utterly extraordinary my childhood was. "
John le Carre
Joy
Child
You
" I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity. "
John le Carre
Us
Think
Religions
" A committee is an animal with four back legs. "
John le Carre
Legs
Animal
Back
" I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly. "
John le Carre
Early
Fly
Language
" There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story set in a public school - I'd once taught at Eton, and I used that stuff. "
John le Carre
Story
Used
Quality
" During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity. "
John le Carre
Cold War
Cold
Grey
" I want to be like Ford Madox Ford. I want to be talking to somebody across a fire, and I want him to join me and listen to me, and if he is fidgeting in his chair, I know I am not doing my job. I am a storyteller, and I know most people like a story. "
John le Carre
People
Fire
I Am
" Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West. "
John le Carre
Totalitarian
Accountable
West
" In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know. "
John le Carre
Know
Crisis
Reality
" Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby. "
John le Carre
Like
Little
Book
" For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict. "
John le Carre
Political
Better
Conflict
" There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction. "
John le Carre
Only
Subjects
Tackled
" When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt. "
John le Carre
Better
Age
Go For It
" Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader. "
John le Carre
Creative
Opinion
Imagination
" I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with. "
John le Carre
Get
Think
Whatever
" I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives. "
John le Carre
Sense
Without
Good
" I've always had difficulties with female characters. "
John le Carre
Characters
Difficulties
Had
" If you're growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become a performer and control the circumstances around you. You lead from weakness into strength; you have an undefended back. "
John le Carre
World
Control
Growing Up
" We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another. "
John le Carre
Lie
Dress
Every Day
" I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies. "
John le Carre
Lies
Media
United States
" I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no one else can make them. "
John le Carre
Never
Money
Wrong
" We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own. "
John le Carre
Never
Political
Conspiracy
" Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book. "
John le Carre
Talk
Mistakes
Book
" It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it's his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely. "
John le Carre
Intelligence
Community
Think
" Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it. "
John le Carre
Something
Know
Should