John le Carré quotes - page 5
John le Carré was a British author renowned for his espionage novels, including "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" and the George Smiley series. His works offered a nuanced, morally complex view of the Cold War and intelligence operations. He became a master of the spy thriller, influencing generations of writers and readers. Here are 113 of his quotes:
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.
John le Carré
America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.
The reaction to 9/11 is beyond anything Osama bin Laden could have hoped for in his nastiest dreams. As in McCarthy times, the freedoms that have made America the envy of the world are being systematically eroded. The combination of compliant US media and vested corporate interests is once more ensuring that a debate that should be ringing out in every town square is confined to the loftier columns of the East Coast press.
John le Carré
What the hell do you think spies are? Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me, little men, drunkards, queers, henpecked husbands, civil servants, playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? (from a clip from the film adaptation of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, starring Richard Burton as Alec Leamas, an alcoholic cynical British spy)
John le Carré
What I fear I have seen in the run-up to the Iraq War in this country is the politicization of intelligence to fit the political intentions of our masters. And to my mind, that was a terrible moment in the history, the visible history, of intelligence work in this country, where the intelligence service itself became effectively co-author and signatory to the so-called dodgy dossier, which - on the strength of which Colin Powell was able to present a dire picture of the threat from Iraq, which turned out to be untrue.
John le Carré
![I'd have asked him [Tony Blair] about his faith, because we were told, when journalists asked about Blair's faith, the reply was, "We don't do God here.” Well, of course, he does do God, and he reports that his actions have been put before God and confirmed, as if somehow God has signed a chit for him. (John le Carré)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/40/john-le-carr-chit-1009840.webp)
There are something like 80 or 90 "airlines” - in quotes - registered in Congo, and these simply belong to tiny exploitative companies that harness boy soldiers and kids to dig out the diamonds or the coltan, whatever it may be, and ship it out of Congo without paying duty or anything of that sort. Without paying royalties to anyone is theft. And Congo is being exploited by everybody on account of these reasons, in addition to providing the battleground for other people's wars.
John le Carré
John le Carré
Photo:
Krimidoedel,
CC BY 3.0
Occupation: British Novelist
Born: October 19, 1931
Died: December 12, 2020
Quotes count: 113
Wikipedia: John le Carré
Related authors
