John le Carre Zitate auf Englisch

Seite 2

A committee is an animal with four back legs.

John le Carre

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

John le Carre

I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.

John le Carre

My definition of a decent society is one that first of all takes care of its losers, and protects its weak.

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

I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself.

John le Carre

You should have died when I killed you.

John le Carre

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

John le Carre

Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.

John le Carre

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

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

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.

John le Carre

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.

John le Carre

Well, certainly I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

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

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.

John le Carre

The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days.

John le Carre

I want to be like Ford Madox Ford. I want to be talking to somebody across a fire, and I want him to join me and listen to me, and if he is fidgeting in his chair, I know I am not doing my job. I am a storyteller, and I know most people like a story.

John le Carre

Writers are two-home men - they want a place outside and a place within.

John le Carre

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

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.

John le Carre