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
cutting age way
By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my own cloth and make my own way.
fool literature language
Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.
mean messages storytelling
I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.
war cold witch
I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.
literature century made
More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
war stones principles
There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.
men eight feet
George Smiley: [quoting an old letter from Bill Haydon about Jim Prideaux] He has that heavy quiet that commands. He's my other half. Between us we'd make one marvelous man. He asks nothing better than to be in my company or that of my wicked, divine friends, and I'm vastly tickled by the compliment. He's virgin, about eight foot tall, and built by the same firm that did Stonehenge
men long born-free
All men are born free: just not for long.
unique mind limits
The good pupils are often brilliant, and they keep you on your toes and take you to the limits of your knowledge. The worst pupils provide a unique insight into the criminal mind.
hands design misery
...in the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery...
morality trouble british
I once heard someone say morality was method. Do you hold with that? I suppose you wouldn't. You would say that morality was vested in the aim, I expect. Difficult to know what one's aims are, that's the trouble, specially if you're British.
cat compassion spy
I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. '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.
dies
Let's die of it before we're too old.
doing-nothing facts littles
The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.