‘Love… is whatever you can still betray’: John le Carre in quotes
From the art of spying to questions of morality, the acclaimed author, who has died aged 89, was a powerful voice
John le Carre in quotes:
Machiavellian
“Intelligence work has one moral law — it is justified by results.”
– “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold” (1963)
Love hurts
“Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
– Adrian Haldane, in “The Looking Glass War” (1965)
Hidden truths
“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
– “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (1974)
Theory and practice
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.”
– “The Honourable Schoolboy” (1977)
Search for a cause
“You are a perfect spy. All you need is a cause.”
– Axel, the Czech spymaster, addressing Magnus Pym, in “A Perfect Spy” (1986)
Marx to money
“Now we had defeated Communism, we were going to have to set about defeating capitalism.”
– Ned, the main character in “The Secret Pilgrim” (1990).
Iraq war
“America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.”
– Commentary by Le Carre in the Times newspaper in January 2003 in the buildup to the Iraq War.
Varied career
“Apart from spying, I have in my time sold bathtowels, got divorced, washed elephants, run away from school, decimated a flock of Welsh sheep with a twenty-five pound shell because I was too stupid to understand the gunnery officer’s instructions, taught children in a special school.”
From the author’s website
Why le Carre?
“I was asked so many times why I chose this ridiculous name, then the writer’s imagination came to my help. I saw myself riding over Battersea Bridge, on top of a bus, looking down at a tailor’s shop… And it was called something of this sort —- le Carré. That satisfied everybody for years. But lies don’t last with age. I find a frightful compulsion towards truth these days. And the truth is, I don’t know.”
– Interview with The Paris Review, 1996
Old school
“I hate the telephone. I can’t type. I ply my trade by hand. I live on a Cornish cliff and hate cities. Three days and nights in a city are about my maximum.”
– From the author’s website
