Quotes from Len Deighton

I think the reason working-class people don't write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.

Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.

What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history.

The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.

When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war.

Husbands are a by-product of marriage,' said Harvey. 'A waste product,' corrected Mercy Newbegin.

rather split his trousers than an infinitive.

Time used to be the panacea for everything, but nowadays our sins are remembered on computers, and random-accessed memories do not fade.

You should never have told them,' said Dicky, who could always be relied upon for excellent advice long after it was any use.

Don't explain,' I said. 'Leave me something to be mystified about.

Sex is like crime. Only one per cent motivation and ninety-nine per cent opportunity.

waiting at the bus stop. Only then did he feel safe. He turned abruptly

Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves.

To give my characters a real, or at least a convincing, life demanded more space. Did giving them a domestic dimension mean pressing the pause button in order to relate the dull routines of mortgages, electric bills, children's ailments and traffic jams? No, that is not the way to treat your readers unless you just don't care about them; and in that case you should be writing literary novels.

Berlin. 25 June 1940. I have the impression that we are rushing for a common currency for the whole of Europe. That would be progress, of course, and, one would hope, of lasting significance. Letter from Helmuth von Moltke (military intelligence)1

Or was the truth - like so many truths - not any one of the envisaged possibilities?

Poor fellow, he needed handmade shoes because of his 'awkward feet' and Savile Row suits because he wasn't lucky enough to have the figure for ready-made ones. Cheap wine played havoc with his stomach so he drank expensive ones, and because he couldn't fit into economy-size airline seats he was forced to go everywhere first class.

what it could do by patrolling systematically

There is no sadness to compare with the grief of the young.

He trades on emotions, not facts.

He had the wide toothy smile of the Oriental.

For fear is so unwelcome that it comes only in disguise, and guilt is its favourite one.