John Le
John Le
running home homecoming
Home's where you go when you run out of homes.
wind choices littles
There was nothing dishonourable in not being blown about by every little modern wind. Better to have worth, to entrench, to be an oak of one's own generation.
night heaven firsts
God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.
survival infinite capacity
Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.
tyrants house tyranny
Tyranny is like the electric wiring in an old house. A tyrant dies, the new tyrant takes possession, and all he has to do is drop the switch.
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.
angel heart self
Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.
quiet
He has the gift of quiet.
pigs years people
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.
writing dust pie
Writing is like walking in a deserted street. Out of the dust in the street you make a mud pie.
thinking childhood balance
Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.
father teaching two
I had two experiences of criminality: one was my conman father, the other was teaching at Eton
animal legs four
A committee is an animal with four back legs.
real writing thinking
Most of us live in a condition of secrecy: secret desires, secret appetites, secret hatreds and relationship with the institutions which is extremely intense and uncomfortable. These are, to me, a part of the ordinary human condition. So I don't think I'm writing about abnormal things. ... Artists, in my experience, have very little center. They fake. They are not the real thing. They are spies. I am no exception.