John le Carre
John le Carre
David John Moore Cornwellis a British author of espionage novels. During the 1950s and the 1960s, he worked for the Security Service and the Secret Intelligence Service, and began writing novels under a pen name. His third novel, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, became an international best-seller, and remains one of his best-known works. Following the success of this novel, he left MI6 to become a full-time author...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth19 October 1931
war cold witch
I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.
thinking dread committees
I think that where I've watched a movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
differences west states
But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.
double-standard world standards
Once you've lived the inside-out world of espionage, you never shed it. It's a mentality, a double standard of existence.
fiction fiction-writers credible
Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
believe literature should
Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.
people literature messages
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.
secret tonight literature
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.
lying real thinking
But I think the real tension lies in the relationship between what you might call the pursuer and his quarry, whether it's the writer or the spy.
literature century made
More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
intelligence-services opposites secret
The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.
baby book littles
Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.
book men hands
I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.
loyalty liars gentleman
Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.