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
John le Carre quotes about
absolutely arm best brings collection essential government healthy intelligence left necessary needs simply strong understand work
It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.
absolutely books darling defined french man passes people secret wartime
In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.
production public school second taught
There was an ITV television production of the second novel I wrote, called 'Murder of Quality.' It was a little murder story set in a public school - I'd once taught at Eton, and I used that stuff.
awful behave club couple guys hard human marriage mess normal pounds struggling suddenly thousand writers
I made an awful mess of my first marriage. It was hard to live with me being me. I was so abnormal. I mean, most writers struggle. I hadn't struggled. I couldn't suddenly go down to the PEN Club and behave like a normal human being, because most of those guys were struggling to make a couple of thousand pounds a year.
intelligence since
I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.
across ford join listen people somebody talking
I want to be like Ford Madox Ford. I want to be talking to somebody across a fire, and I want him to join me and listen to me, and if he is fidgeting in his chair, I know I am not doing my job. I am a storyteller, and I know most people like a story.
came depending merit stood
The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible.
men writers
Writers are two-home men - they want a place outside and a place within.
age british came diplomat embassy extreme guise intelligence junior officer personal secret spy time wrote
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.
begin decent liberal mass opinion suffer suffers whether wonder
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.
admired awkward borrowed elements extremely fellow george hunt invested mole mythical people recalled retired spy
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.
held impunity
Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West.
brought came disgust imagination spy work
'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' was the work of a wayward imagination brought to the end of its tether by political disgust and personal confusion.
confronted famous literary occupied territory
I don't know the literary world; I was scared of being confronted with famous names, not knowing what they had written. It was occupied territory I was entering.