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" In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building. "

John le Carre

People

Building

Circus

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" Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love. "

" I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity. "

John le Carre

Think

Religions

" 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. "

" I think, increasingly, despite what we are being told is an ever more open world of communication, there is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes. "

" I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it. "

John le Carre

Believe

Think

" Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence. "

" 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. "

" America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember. "

" If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing. "

" I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it. "

John le Carre

Think

Wrong

" Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic. "

" A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it. "

John le Carre

Through

Outside

" 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. "

" Well, certainly 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. "

" The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London. "

" The world of spying is my genre. My struggle is to demystify, to de-romanticise the spook world, but at the same time harness it as a good story. "

" Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. "

" In the '60s - and right up to the present day - the identity of a member of the British Secret Services was and is, quite rightly, a state secret. To divulge it is a crime. The Services may choose to leak a name when it pleases them. "

John le Carre

Name

Present

" But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state. "

" More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature. "

John le Carre

Made

" History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose. "

" Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. "

" If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level. "

" 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. "

" There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction. "

" The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received. "

" In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs. "

" I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man. "

" People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others. "

" 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. "