John le Carré Quotes

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

"There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never."

"So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?"

"Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God."

Findley was not quite a character, thank you! Frau Ellenberger retorted furiously. He wasn't a character at all. Mr Findley was assembled entirely from characteristics stolen from other people!

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?

Savages...are by nature rash. They have no middle gear. The middle gear of any man is self-discipline.

...what woman has ever stopped by a want of information? She felt. And despised him for not acting in accordance with her feelings.

A good writer is an expert on nothing except himself. And on that subject, if he is wise, he holds his tongue. Some of you may wonder why I am reluctant to submit to interviews on television and radio and in the press. The answer is that nothing that I write is authentic. It is the stuff of dreams, not reality. Yet I am treated by the media as though I wrote espionage handbooks.

Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things; he grinned like a schoolboy. And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can't compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?

Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.

George, you won,' said Guillam, as they walked slowly towards the car.

'Did I?' said Smiley. 'Yes. Yes, well I suppose I did.

"And we dress, sir — ?" he murmured, feeling Osnard's gaze burning the nape of his neck. "Most of my gentlemen seem to favour left these days. I don't think it's political."
This was his standard joke, calculated to raise a laugh even with the most sedate of his customers. Not with Osnard apparently.
"Never know where the bloody thing is. Bobs about like a windsock," he replied dismissively.

He met failure as one day he would probably meet death, with cynical resentment and the courage of a solitary.

He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man

I've studied the disease, I've lived in the swamp. It is my informed conclusion that we are suffering, as an ex-great nation, from top-down corporate rot. And that's not just the judgement of an ailing old fart. A lot of people in my Service make a profession of not seeing things in black and white. Do not confuse me with them. I'm a late-onset, red-toothed radical with balls. Still with me?