348 Quotes by John le Carré

The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

I'm really a library man, or second-hand book man.

Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.

Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.

I don't think that there are very many good writers who don't live without a sense of tension. If they haven't got one immediately available to them, then they usually manage to manufacture it in their private lives.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.