02UndatedA dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.John le Carré / quote ↗
03UndatedIt is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.John le Carré / quote ↗
04UndatedBy what route the infant Hansen found his way to the Jesuits, the file did not relate. Perhaps the mother converted. Those were dark years still, and if expediency required it, she may have swallowed her Protestant convictions to buy the boy a decent education. Give the Jesuits his soul, she may have reasoned, and they will give him a brain. Or perhaps she sensed in her son from early on the mercurial nature that later ruled his life, and she determined to subordinate him to a stronger religious discipline than was offered by the easy-going Protestants. If so, she was wise.John le Carré / quote ↗
05UndatedYet it's not for want of future that I'm here, he thought. It's for want of a present.John le Carré / quote ↗
06UndatedThere's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired of believing that, because we're human. We may even con ourselves into believing the threat has gone away. It never will. Never, never, never.""So, who'll save us then, Walt?" Barley asked. "You and Nedsky?""Vanity, if anything will, which I doubt," Walter retorted. "No leader wants to go down in history as the ass who destroyed his country in an afternoon. And funk, I suppose. Most of our gallant politicians do have a narcissistic objection to suicide, thank God.John le Carré / quote ↗
07UndatedThis is a war," Lemas 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 besides other wars - the last or the next.John le Carré / quote ↗
08UndatedI would say that since the war, our methods-out and those of the opposition-have become much the same. I mean you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's 'policy' is benevolent, can you now?John le Carré / quote ↗
09UndatedBy repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.John le Carré / quote ↗
10UndatedTyranny 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.John le Carré / quote ↗
11UndatedIt is only when he speaks German, as now, that he allows himself to lament the enslavement of the world's downtrodden classes. "We cannot live in a bubble, Mr. Mundy. Comfortable ignorance is not a solution. In German student societies that I was not permitted to join, they made a toast: 'Better to be a salamander, and live in the fire.John le Carré / quote ↗
12UndatedHis intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)John le Carré / quote ↗
13UndatedTessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.John le Carré / quote ↗
14UndatedWives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.John le Carré / quote ↗
15UndatedOur power knows no limits, yet we cannot find food for a starving child, or a home for a refugee. Our knowledge is without measure and we build the weapons that will destroy us. We live on the edge of ourselves, terrified of the darkness within. We have harmed, corrupted and ruined, we have made mistakes and deceived.John le Carré / quote ↗
16UndatedHe sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.John le Carré / quote ↗
17UndatedSome people are agents from birth, Monsignors -- he told them -- appointed to the work by the period of history, the place, and their own natural dispositions. In their cases, it was simply a question of who got to them first, Your Eminences: 'Whether it's us, whether it's the opposition, or whether it's the bloody missionaries.John le Carré / quote ↗
18UndatedShe's become a Russian again, he thought. When something works, she's grateful. When it doesn't work, it's life.John le Carré / quote ↗
19UndatedPut it this way, George,” he suggested, when he had savoured the night air for a moment. “You traveling on business, or for pleasure in this thing? Which is it?Smiley’s reply was also slow in coming, and as indirect: “I was never conscious of pleasure,” he said. “Or perhaps I mean: of the distinction.John le Carré / quote ↗
20UndatedI have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.John le Carré / quote ↗
21UndatedWe have to live without sympathy, don't we? That's impossible of course. We act it to one another, all this hardness; but we aren't like that really, I mean...one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold...d'you see what I mean?John le Carré / quote ↗
22UndatedIf there's no sea-gull there's no meeting, Wicklow had said. No sea-gull means abort. That's my epitaph, thought Barley. 'There was no sea-gull, so he aborted.John le Carré / quote ↗
23Undated... in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ...John le Carré / quote ↗
24UndatedI don't break down," she announced. "Got it?"He got it. He was already pulling back, looking ashamed of himself, but somehow he was still holding her wrist."I never break down. I'm a lawyer.John le Carré / quote ↗
