Quotes from le carre john

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day. Because they have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

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.

If you're in a hole, don't dig, they say.

The good pupils are often brilliant, and they keep you on your toes and take you to the limits of your knowledge. The worst pupils provide a unique insight into the criminal mind.

Elections are a Western jerk-off.

You should have died when I killed you.

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.

All men are born free: just not for long.

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.

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.

When a problem threatens to engulf you, there's nothing like irrelevant detail to keep your head above water.

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.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.