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
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
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous. But neither, in my experience, do we ever reach a plane of detachment regarding our parents, however wise and old we may become. To pretend otherwise is to cheat. – John le Carre
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
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn’t easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity. – John le Carre
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic. – 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
Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven’t made is to talk about the unwritten book. – John le Carre
I suffer from the same frustration that every decent American suffers from. That is, that you begin to wonder whether decent liberal instincts, decent humanitarian instincts, can actually penetrate the right-wing voice, get through the steering of American opinion by the mass media. – John le Carre
In the last 15 or 20 years, I’ve watched the British press simply go to hell. There seems to be no limit, no depths to which the tabloids won’t sink. I don’t know who these people are but they’re little pigs. – John le Carre
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, whether it’s his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely. – John le Carre
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
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
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
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes. – John le Carre
The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James’s Park Tube station in London. – John le Carre
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
When you are brought up as a frozen child, you go on freezing. It wasn’t until I had my four sons, who have brought me immense joy, that I began to thaw. That I realised how utterly extraordinary my childhood was. – 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. I don’t remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of ‘The Wind in the Willows,’ which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital. – John le Carre
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. – John le Carre
I wrote ‘The Spy Who Came in from the Cold’ at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself. – John le Carre
