John le Carré Quotes

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

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

Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

Every man has his personal devil waiting for him somewhere.

The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy.

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

"There are always a dozen reasons for doing nothing," Ann liked to say — it was a favourite apologia, indeed, for many of her misdemeanours. "There is only one reason for doing something. And that's because you want to." Or have to? Ann would furiously deny it: coercion, she would say, is just another word for doing what you want; or for not doing what you are afraid of.

I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now i wish i could distinguish them.

And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackens, that his life had consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order, and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it.

Yes, dear Father. But has it ever occurred to you that by controlling [your feelings] you destroy them? How many times can we say sorry before we don't feel sorry anymore?

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

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.

But gossip must see its characters
in black and white, equip them with
sins and motives easily conveyed in
the shorthand of conversation.

Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. ...when had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom?

In a civilized country you can never tell.