John Le Carre Quotes

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue.

Power expands through the distribution of secrecy.

No problem exists in isolation, one must first reduce it to its basic components, then tackle each component in turn.

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

After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.

Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

Love means having something to betray.

It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.

Smiley was soaked to the skin and God as a punishment had removed all taxis from the face of London.

Each my book feels like my last book. And then I think, like a dedicated alcoholic, that one more won't do me any harm.

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.

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.

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

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

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

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

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.

All power corrupts but some must govern.

Multi-billion-dollar multinational corporations view the exploitation of the world's sick and dying as a sacred duty to their shareholders.

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

Jesus Christ only had twelve, you know, and one of them was a double.

By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.

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

If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

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.

There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.

I can't think of anybody worse to live with.

Life was to be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.

The things that are done in the name of the shareholder are, to me, as terrifying as the things that are done - dare I say it - in the name of God.

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

People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.

When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

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.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.

There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.

I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.

Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

Let's die of it before we're too old.

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.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.