John le Carre
John le Carre
David John Moore Cornwellis a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, he worked for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under a pen name. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became an international best-seller, and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth19 October 1931
animal legs four
A committee is an animal with four back legs.
writing cat stories
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
war literature shade
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
news literature secrecy
Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.
tyrants house tyranny
Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.
wise thinking people
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.
strong weak
Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.
night heaven firsts
God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.
encounters
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.
enemy fool looks
After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.
lonely congratulations home
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.
children mistake home
Our power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.
stuff too-much moments
There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.
survival infinite capacity
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.