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" Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence. "
John le Carre
Never
World
Existence
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" During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity. "
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" 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. "
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" I write and walk and swim and drink. "
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" I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name. "
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" The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" 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
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" It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret. "
John le Carre
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" I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making. "
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" America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember. "
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" But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state. "
John le Carre
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" Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book. "
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" 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. "
John le Carre
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" 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. "
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" A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world. "
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" Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news. "
John le Carre
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" But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy. "
John le Carre
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" 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. "
John le Carre
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" More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature. "
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" You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty. "
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" Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie. "
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" Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. "
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" The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days. "
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" Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do. "
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" I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety. "
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" By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way. "
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" To give the best of the day to your work is most important. "
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" 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. "
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