I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
John Le Carre

I've always had difficulties with female characters.
John Le Carre

Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
John Le Carre

If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.
John Le Carre

If there is one eternal truth of politics, it is that there are always a dozen good reasons for doing nothing.
John le Carre

In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
John Le Carre

In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won't sink. I don't know who these people are but they're little pigs.
John Le Carre

Love is whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
John le Carre

Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage.
John Le Carre

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.
John Le Carre

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.
John Le Carre

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.
John Le Carre

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.
John Le Carre

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.
John Le Carre

The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat.
John le Carre

There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction.
John Le Carre

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.
John Le Carre

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.
John Le Carre

We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ourselves and compose ourselves in order to present ourselves to one another.
John Le Carre

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.
John Le Carre