Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Related Quotes:
" Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby. "
John le Carre
Like
Little
Book
" I happen to write by hand. I don't even type. "
John le Carre
Type
Hand
Even
" 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 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
Go
Think
" 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
" 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
Relationship
Truth
Performance
" Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love. "
John le Carre
Love Is
Betrayal
Happen
" 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
" 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
" Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that. "
John le Carre
Language
Damn
Most
" I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety. "
John le Carre
Had
Shade
Nothing
" America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember. "
John le Carre
Madness
Worst
Remember
" The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead. "
John le Carre
Over
Cold War
Dead
" I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with. "
John le Carre
Get
Think
Whatever
" 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. "
John le Carre
Struggle
Good
Same
" If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing. "
John le Carre
Doing
Nothing
Politics
" For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict. "
John le Carre
Political
Better
Conflict
" 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
" 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
" I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making. "
John le Carre
Message
Mean
Business
" I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself. "
John le Carre
Say
Yourself
Laugh
" 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 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
" A committee is an animal with four back legs. "
John le Carre
Legs
Animal
Back
" A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it. "
John le Carre
Like
Through
Outside
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
John le Carre
Hell
Last
Limit
" Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. "
John le Carre
Your
Book
Movie