John le Carré Quotes

John Lansbury had remarked upon it: “You have sales resistance to the dramatic, Brim; the rare gift of contempt for what is urgent. I know of a dozen people who would pay you five thousand a year for telling them every day that what is important is seldom urgent. Urgent equals ephemeral, and ephemeral equals unimportant.”

It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realised that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity.

It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.

Chic, that’s what he is—a barmaid’s dream of a real gentleman.

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.

Smiley was not opposed to social distinctions but he liked to make his own.

The snow is still falling and the worst man in the world is drawn towards it like a man who is contemplating his childhood in the dancing flakes.

He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.

Look... we're getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems. I can see through Eastern values just as you can see through our Western ones. Both of us, I am sure, have experienced ad nauseam the technical satisfactions of this wretched war. But now your own side is going to shoot you. Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?

Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward.

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.

Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things. What do you think of i?

The English! The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food—that’s what’s happened to the English.

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.