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 literature shade
During the Cold War, we lived in coded times when it wasn't easy and there were shades of grey and ambiguity.
writing hands literature
I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.
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.
literature century made
More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.
should-have literature should
You should have died when I killed you.
fool literature language
Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.
america literature remember
America has entered one of its periods of historic madness, but this is the worst I can remember.
german-language bumblebees literature
I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.
news literature secrecy
Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.
unhappy-childhood people literature
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.
spy literature population
A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.
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.