Quotation:
"It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information-often in secret-and to translate that into intelligence for his masters."
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. "
- "Graham Greene once referred to a chip of ice that has to be in the ..."
- "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 my own bizarre childhood, I had no mother and I didn't have a very ..."
- "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 ..."
- "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 ..."


