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
chaotic growing instinct lead performer strength weakness
If you're growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become a performer and control the circumstances around you. You lead from weakness into strength; you have an undefended back.
quiet
He has the gift of quiet.
intelligence since
I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.
coming creative dressing energy equipped imagination novelists relying scene
Like every novelist, I fantasise about film. Novelists are not equipped to make a movie, in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting, they're dressing the scene, they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from, and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.
confronted famous literary occupied territory
I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering.
unhappy-childhood people literature
People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents you for yourself, nothing is left but to invent yourself for others.
who-we-are
Let's all pretend to be someone else, and then perhaps we'll find out who we are.
spy literature population
A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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.
survival infinite capacity
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
spy matter habit
Treason is very much a matter of habit, Smiley decided.
not-happy shots
Everyone who is not happy must be shot.
hypocrisy enemy odd
Those who are not with Mr. Bush are against him. Worse, they are with the enemy. Which is odd, because I'm dead against Bush, but I would love to see Saddam's downfall -- just not on Bush's terms and not by his methods. And not under the banner of such outrageous hypocrisy.
misery these-days journalist
What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?