John le Carre Quotes

I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention.
John le Carre

Making, Order, Chaos

I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
John le Carre

Wrong, Movie, Committee

I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
John le Carre

Age, Democracy, Find

I don't think it is given to any of us to be impertinent to great religions with impunity.
John le Carre

Great, Religions, Impunity

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.
John le Carre

End, Father, Book

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
John le Carre

Happen, Write, Hand

I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no one else can make them.
John le Carre

Money, Made, Wrong

I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.
John le Carre

Business, Mean, Making

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.
John le Carre

Language, Ask, Early

I think bankers will always get away with whatever they can get away with.
John le Carre

Away, Whatever, Bankers

I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
John le Carre

Wrong, Movie, Committee

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
John le Carre

Life, Work, Family

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.
John le Carre

Great, War, Cold

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

Characters, Female

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

Laugh, Him, Down

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

Politics, Good, Truth

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

War, Crisis, Reality

More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
John le Carre

Education, Made, Literature

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 Carre

Working, Energy, Opinion

Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
John le Carre

Once, Existence, Lived

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

Good, Yourself, Nothing

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

Remember, Another, Balance

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

Mistakes, Book, Made

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

War, Long, Before

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Writer

Born: October 19, 1931

Links

Find on Amazon: John le Carre

Cite this Page: Citation

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