Famous quotes by John Le Carre:

"The spy who came in from the cold."

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

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

"America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember."

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world"

"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."

"Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes."

"A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world."

"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."

"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."

"During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity."

"A committee is an animal with four back legs."

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

"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."

"You have no idea how humiliating it was, as a boy, to suddenly have all your clothes, your toys, snatched by the bailiff. I mean we were a middle-class family, it's not as if it was happening up and down the street. It made me ashamed, I felt dirty."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."