John le Carre
British writer of spy novels, and a former spy himself.
Luck's just another word for destiny...either you make your own or you're screwed.
So odd to think of the Devil as a fumbler!
There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.
To operate an intelligence network against the Islamist terror is terribly difficult because they don't have a central command and control center such as we would understand. Therefore you cannot penetrate at the top and find out what will happen on the ground.
The friends of my friends are my friends.
He worked for the fleshy side of the Foreign Office and his job consisted of lunching visiting dignitaries whom no one else would have entertained in his woodshed.
"This is a war," Leamas replied. "It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing, nothing at all beside other wars – the last or the next."
Every writer wants to be believed. But every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic.
On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.
Blackmail is more effective than bribery.
Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward.
A good man knows when to sacrifice himself, a bad man survives but loses his soul.
You see a lot — your eyes get very painful.
You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.
I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because most people like to read about intrigue and spies. I hope to provide a metaphor for the average reader's daily life. Most of us live in a slightly conspiratorial relationship with our employer and perhaps with our marriage. I think what gives my works whatever universality they have is that they use the metaphysical secret world to describe some realities of the overt world.
There are some Arabs who think that the Germans did the right thing by the Jews. This makes it easy to recruit Arab terrorist.
Peace, gentlemen, it is well known, does not come of its own accord, and neither does freedom. Peace has enemies. Peace must be won by the sword.
Because we are so unfamiliar with the motivation of the people we are dealing with, we are more afraid of them than we need to be.
The neglected are too easily killed.
We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease.