Love is whatever you can still betray … Betrayal can only happen if you love.
—John le Carre
Topics: Betrayal, One liners
What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They’re a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives.
—John le Carre
A committee is an animal with four back legs.
—John le Carre
Topics: Committees
I don’t think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
—John le Carre
Ideologies have no heart of their own. They’re the whores and angels of our striving selves.
—John le Carre
You ask can we ever trust the Bear?… I will give you several answers at once. The first is no, we can never trust the Bear. For one reason, the Bear doesn
—John le Carre
Topics: Trust
For better or worse, I’ve been involved in the description of political conflict.
—John le Carre
Topics: Conflict
The practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a facility most of us can acquire.
—John le Carre
When the world is destroyed, it will be destroyed not by its madmen but by the sanity of its experts and the superior ignorance of its bureaucrats.
—John le Carre
Topics: World
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-ight drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
—John le Carre
Topics: Home
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.
—John le Carre
Topics: History
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Raymond Chandler American Novelist
- George Orwell English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Richard Eyre British Director
- Muriel Spark Scottish Novelist, Poet
- Peter Ustinov British Actor, Playwright
- Douglas Adams British Author
- John Fowles English Novelist
- Kingsley Amis English Novelist, Poet
- Anthony Burgess English Novelist, Critic
Leave a Reply