"In my own bizarre childhood, I had no mother and I didn't have a very normal upbringing with girls in my own peer group."

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More quotes from: John Le Carre

• "A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through ..."
• "ABSOLUTE FRIENDS did not just pop out of a box but came quite naturally from ..."
• "Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it. "
• "Anybody in the creative business, as you might call it, has some sense of guilt ..."
• "By the age of 9 or 10, I knew that I had to cut my ..."
• "During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there ..."
• "Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic. "
• "For better or worse, I've been involved in the description of political conflict. "
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• "Having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature. "
• "I always begin with one character and then perhaps two, and they seem to be ..."
• "I am at a stage in my life-now quite late-where I am completely reconciled to ..."
• "I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention. "
• "I believe it's possible to be too exotic in a novel to the point where ..."
• "I came from a dysfunctional background, a semi-criminal background. "
• "I cannot help voicing my characters and listening to them-that's the failed actor in me. "
• "I didn't feel queasy about addressing the tradition of Jewish tailors in the East End. ..."
• "I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more ..."
• "I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a ..."
• "I happen to write by hand. I don't even type. "
• "I have always felt that the great botched decisions of my life were the work ..."
• "I have to introduce levels of intelligence on both sides and in each protagonist, which ..."
• "I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the ..."

• "I think I have been better served by television than film. It also depends on ..."
• "I think I was born with two lucky skills. One is a very good ear ..."
• "I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. ..."
• "I think that there are books that I hope I will still write where I ..."
• "I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread ..."
• "I thought A Perfect Spy was a well-told autobiographical novel, to put it immodestly. The ..."
• "I was innocent enough to believe I could influence the film when it was going ..."
• "I was very aware of a feeling of professional menopause. I felt that I needed ..."
• "I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man. "
• "I've always had difficulties with female characters. "
• "I've ceased to give interviews in Britain, having read that I was in the habit ..."
• "If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my ..."
• "If you describe a Secret Service and impose upon it the same ground rules of ..."
• "If you're growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become ..."
• "In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then ..."
• "In the last 15 or 20 years, I've watched the British press simply go to ..."
• "It's been more than 40 years since I had anything to do with the secret ..."
• "It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey ..."
• "Kubrick wanted me to do Eyes Wide Shut. I'm sure he approached several writers. I ..."
• "Most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor ..."
• "My great sin was suggesting that the state of Israel-that Palestine-was in fact a twice-promised ..."
• "Once you're comfortable with a perspective upon life, you go back to certain situations and ..."

• "People who've had very unhappy childhoods are pretty good at inventing themselves. If nobody invents ..."
• "Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think ..."
• "Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about ..."
• "The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead. "
• "The disciplines of storytelling require that I shape, out of the monotony and everyday life ..."
• "The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by ..."
• "The notion that we can really plug into really huge amounts of data is really ..."
• "The question of the Englishness of my books and their exportability fascinates me too, and ..."
• "The spy novel encapsulates public wariness. "
• "There are some subjects that can only be tackled in fiction. "
• "There's something called the actor's guilt, the feeling that you're playing with life-you're acting life ..."
• "Tinker, Tailor centred on a wonderfully simple premise: that there is a spy inside our ..."
• "Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was ..."
• "We always think that we are prisoners of our own image. I didn't want my ..."
• "We can all have strong views, and they may differ, but the issue that is ..."
• "We have an extra telephone line installed and we have a Mac. I think by ..."
• "We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms ..."
• "We lie to one another every day, in the sweetest way, often unconsciously. We dress ..."
• "When I did the stuff that was so formative in my life, went into the ..."
• "When Murdoch took over a great chunk of the British press, the remaining newspapers had ..."
• "When the embarrassing film, The Little Drummer Girl, was in rough cut, it was brought ..."
• "When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty ..."