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There's One Thing Worse Than Change And That's The Status Quo.
-John Le Carre
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There's One Thing Worse

John Le Carre
...
There's One Thing Worse Than Change And That's The Status Quo.

Understanding the Quote: "there's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo...."

This quote by John Le Carre reflects deeply on the theme of status quo. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Status Quo, One Thing, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John le Carre interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Le Carre

John Le Carre is celebrated for insightful thoughts on status quo and one thing. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Status Quo
One Thing
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The Monsters Of Our Childhood Do Not Fade Away, Neither Are They Ever Wholly Monstrous. But Neither, In My Experience, Do We Ever Reach A Plane Of Detachment Regarding Our Parents, However Wise And Old We May Become. To Pretend Otherwise Is To Cheat.
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Most People Like To Read About Intrigue And Spies. I Hope To Provide A Metaphor For The Average Reader's Daily Life. Most Of Us Live In A Slightly Conspiratorial Relationship With Our Employer And Perhaps With Our Marriage.
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More Particularly, Having A Largely German-oriented Education Has Made Me Very Responsive To 19th-century German Literature.
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A Lot Of People See Doubt As Legitimate Philosophical Posture. They Think Of Themselves In The Middle, Whereas Of Course Really, They're Nowhere.
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The Things That Are Done In The Name Of The Shareholder Are, To Me, As Terrifying As The Things That Are Done - Dare I Say It - In The Name Of God.
Names
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Dare
Until We Have A Better Relationship Between Private Performance And The Public Truth, As Was Demonstrated With Watergate, We As The Public Are Absolutely Right To Remain Suspicious, Contemptuous Even, Of The Secrecy And The Misinformation Which Is The Digest Of Our News.
News
Literature
Secrecy
Writing Is Like Walking In A Deserted Street. Out Of The Dust In The Street You Make A Mud Pie.
Writing
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Agents Of Disruption, Subversion, Sabotage And Disinformation Tunnelers And Smugglers, Listeners And Forgers, Trainers And Recruiters And Talent Spotters And Couriers And Watchers And Seducers, Assassins And Balloonists, Lip Readers And Disguise Artists.
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My Definition Of A Decent Society Is One That First Of All Takes Care Of Its Losers, And Protects Its Weak.
Care
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When A Problem Threatens To Engulf You, There's Nothing Like Irrelevant Detail To Keep Your Head Above Water.
Water
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Once You've Lived The Inside-out World Of Espionage, You Never Shed It. It's A Mentality, A Double Standard Of Existence.
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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.
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Give A Man A Car Of His Own And He Leaves Humility And Common Sense Behind Him In The Garage.
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When The World Is Destroyed, It Will Be Destroyed Not By Its Madmen But By The Sanity Of Its Experts And The Superior Ignorance Of Its Bureaucrats.
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Out Of Date, Perhaps, But Who Wasn't These Days? Out Of Date, But Loyal To His Own Time. At A Certain Moment, After All, Every Man Chooses: Will He Go Forward, Will He Go Back? There Was Nothing Dishounorable 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.
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...also Took For Granted That Secret Services Were The Only Real Measure Of A Nations Political Health, The Only Real Expression Of Its Subconscious.
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I Grew Up In A Completely Bookless Household. It Was My Father's Boast That He Had Never Read A Book From End To End. I Don't Remember Any Of His Ladies Being Bookish. So I Was Entirely Dependent On My Schoolteachers For My Early Reading With The Exception Of The Wind In The Willows, Which A Stepmother Read To Me When I Was In Hospital.
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The Religious Cant That Will Send American Troops Into Battle Is Perhaps The Most Sickening Aspect Of This Surreal War-to-be. Bush Has An Arm-lock On God. And God Has Very Particular Political Opinions. God Appointed America To Save The World In Any Way That Suits America. God Appointed Israel To Be The Nexus Of America's Middle Eastern Policy, And Anyone Who Wants To Mess With That Idea Is A) Anti-semitic, B) Anti-american, C) With The Enemy, And D) A Terrorist.
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I Am Still Making Order Out Of Chaos By Reinvention.
Order
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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.
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It Was Man Who Ended The Cold War In Case You Didn't Notice. It Wasn't Weaponry, Or Technology, Or Armies Or Campaigns. It Was Just Man. Not Even Western Man Either, As It Happened, But Our Sworn Enemy In The East, Who Went Into The Streets, Faced The Bullets And The Batons And Said: We've Had Enough. It Was Their Emperor, Not Ours, Who Had The Nerve To Mount The Rostrum And Declare He Had No Clothes. And The Ideologies Trailed After These Impossible Events Like Condemned Prisoners, As Ideologies Do When They've Had Their Day.
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I Once Heard Someone Say Morality Was Method. Do You Hold With That? I Suppose You Wouldn't. You Would Say That Morality Was Vested In The Aim, I Expect. Difficult To Know What One's Aims Are, That's The Trouble, Specially If You're British.
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There's One Thing Worse Than Change And That's The Status Quo.
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I Move My Lips When I Read -- I'm Painfully Slow -- So I Like Really Good English.
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I Grew Up In A Completely Bookless Household. It Was My Father's Boast That He Had Never Read A Book From End To End.
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If There Is One Eternal Truth Of Politics, It Is That There Are Always A Dozen Good Reasons For Doing Nothing.
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Never Trade A Secret, You'll Always Get The Short End Of The Bargain.
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To Possess Another Language Is To Possess Another Soul.
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I've Got More Than One String To My Bow, And I Thought I'd Give This One A Twang.
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Why Did I Desert Labour? Total Bloody Disillusionment. The Party Was A Corpse. It Had No Ideology, It Became Detached, Old, Spineless And Needed To Go.
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I Can't Think Of Anybody Worse To Live With.
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I've Always Had Difficulties With Female Characters.
Character
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Literature
Multi-billion-dollar Multinational Corporations View The Exploitation Of The World's Sick And Dying As A Sacred Duty To Their Shareholders.
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I Think Bankers Will Always Get Away With Whatever They Can Get Away With.
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When It Comes To Recruiting People For The Secret World, What The Recruiters Are Looking For Is Pretty Much What I Had. I Was Unanchored, Looking For An Institution To Look After Me. I Had A Bit Of Larceny. I Understood Larceny. I Understood The Natural Criminality In People - Because It Was - It Was All Around Me. And I Have No Doubt There Was A Chunk Of It Inside Me Too. Once I Found That Identity, It Took Root In Me. It Exactly - It Gelled With The World That I'd Known In The Past.
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What Else Has A Journalist To Do These Days, After All, But Report Life's Miseries?
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Coming Home From Very Lonely Places, All Of Us Go A Little Mad: Whether From Great Personal Success, Or Just An All-night Drive, We Are The Sole Survivors Of A World No One Else Has Ever Seen.
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But There Is A Big Difference In Working For The West And Working For A Totalitarian State.
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The Longing We Have To Communicate Cleanly And Directly With People Is Always Obstructed By Qualifications And Often With Concern About How Our Messages Will Be Received.
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There Is A Terrible Alienation In The Ordinary Man Between What He Is Being Told And What He Secretly Believes.
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I Think That All Writers Feel Alienated. ... I Know That I Do. ... I Still Feel, As I Think Most Creative People Do, Absolutely Isolated.
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Fools, Most Linguists. Damn All To Say In One Language, So They Learn Another And Say Damn All In That.
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Everyone Who Is Not Happy Must Be Shot.
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I Worked For Mi6 In The Sixties, During The Great Witch-hunts, When The Shared Paranoia Of The Cold War Gripped The Services.
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Those Who Are Not With Mr. Bush Are Against Him. Worse, They Are With The Enemy. Which Is Odd, Because I'm Dead Against Bush, But I Would Love To See Saddam's Downfall -- Just Not On Bush's Terms And Not By His Methods. And Not Under The Banner Of Such Outrageous Hypocrisy.
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There Is A Big Difference Between Fighting The Cold War And Fighting Radical Islam. The Rules Have Changed And We Haven't.
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For Decades To Come The Spy World Will Continue To Be The Collective Couch Where The Subconscious Of Each Nation Is Confessed.
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Without A Pen In My Hand I Can't Think.
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Each My Book Feels Like My Last Book. And Then I Think, Like A Dedicated Alcoholic, That One More Won't Do Me Any Harm.
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How Bush And His Junta Succeeded In Deflecting America's Anger From Bin Laden To Saddam Hussein Is One Of The Great Public Relations Conjuring Tricks Of History. But They Swung It. A Recent Poll Tells Us That One In Two Americans Now Believe Saddam Was Responsible For The Attack On The World Trade Centre.
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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.
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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.
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As Our Governments Spin, Lie And Lose Their Credibility, The Electorate Simply Shrugs And Looks The Other Way.
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Yet It's Not For Want Of Future That I'm Here, He Thought. It's For Want Of A Present.
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All Power Corrupts But Some Must Govern.
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We've Had Enough." He Took Back The Report And Jammed It Under His Arm. "we've Had A Bellyful, In Fact." "and Like Everyone Who's Had Enough," Said Control As Alleline Noisily Left The Room, "he Wants More.
Enough Said
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Blackmail Is More Effective Than Bribery.
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A Good Writer Is An Expert On Nothing Except Himself. And On That Subject, If He Is Wise, He Holds His Tongue.
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It's A Principle Of Mine To Come Into The Story As Late As Possible, And To Tell It As Fast As You Can.
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My Definition Of A Decent Society Is One That First Of All Takes Care Of Its Losers, And Protects Its Weak. What I See In My Country, Progressively Over These Years, Is That The Rich Have Got Richer, The Poor Have Got Poorer. The Rich Have Become Indifferent Through A Philosophy Of Greed, And The Poorer Have Become Hopeless Because They're Not Properly Cared For. That's Actually Something That Is Happening In Many Western Societies. Your Own, I Am Told, Is Not Free From It.
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History Keeps Her Secrets Longer Than Most Of Us. But She Has One Secret That I Will Reveal To You Tonight In The Greatest Confidence. Sometimes There Are No Winners At All. And Sometimes Nobody Needs To Lose.
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Tonight
I Think The Greatest Single Enemy Is The Misuse Of Information, The Perversion Of Truth In The Hands Of Terribly Skillful People.
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Thinking
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.
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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.
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A 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.
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A Desk Is A Dangerous Place From Which To View The World.
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I Think I'm In The Same Mood As Ever, But In Some Ways More Mature. I Guess You Could Say That, At 65, When You've Seen The World Shape Up As I Have, There Are Only Two Things You Can Do: Laugh Or Kill Yourself.
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For All The Flailing And Huffing And Puffing, There Is A Kind Of Fatality About The Process Of War-making And The Excuses We Find For It, The Consolation Of Belligerence In Politics.
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Life Was To Be A Search, Or Nothing! But It Was The Fear That It Was Nothing That Drove Me Forward. Every Encounter Was An Encounter With Myself.
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The Greatest Threat To Mankind Comes From The Renunciation Of Individual Scruple In Favor Of Institutional Denominators. . . . Real Heroism Lies, As It Always Will, Not In Conformity Or Even Patriotism, But In Acts Of Solitary Moral Courage. Which, Come To Think Of It, Is What We Used To Admire In Our Christian Savior
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Two
There Will Be No War, But In The Pursuit Of Principle No Stone Will Be Left Standing.
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Luck's Just Another Word For Destiny... Either You Make Your Own Or You're Screwed.
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Most Of Us Live In A Condition Of Secrecy: Secret Desires, Secret Appetites, Secret Hatreds And Relationship With The Institutions Which Is Extremely Intense And Uncomfortable. These Are, To Me, A Part Of The Ordinary Human Condition. So I Don't Think I'm Writing About Abnormal Things. ... Artists, In My Experience, Have Very Little Center. They Fake. They Are Not The Real Thing. They Are Spies. I Am No Exception.
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Let's Die Of It Before We're Too Old.
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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.
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Views
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Littles
In The Hands Of Politicians Grand Designs Achieve Nothing But New Forms Of The Old Misery.
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Novelists Are Not Equipped To Make A Movie, In My Opinion. They Make Their Own Movie When They Write: They're Casting, They're Dressing The Scene, They're Working Out Where The Energy Of The Scene Is Coming From And They're Also Relying Tremendously On The Creative Imagination Of The Reader.
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For Better Or Worse, I've Been Involved In The Description Of Political Conflict.
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The World Of Spying Is My Genre. My Struggle Is To Demystify, To De-romanticise The Spook World, But At The Same Time Harness It As A Good Story.
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You Have No Idea How Humiliating It Was, As A Boy, To Suddenly Have All Your Clothes, Your Toys, Snatched By The Bailiff. I Mean We Were A Middle-class Family, It's Not As If It Was Happening Up And Down The Street. It Made Me Ashamed, I Felt Dirty.
Dirty
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The Only Reward For Love Is The Experience Of Loving.
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It Struck Him As A Bit Unfair That, At The Age Of Eight, He Should Have Manifested The Same Sense Of Solitude That Haunted Him At Forty-three.
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Reality
Elections Are A Western Jerk-off.
Election
Jerk
Western
There Are Moments Which Are Made Up Of Too Much Stuff For Them To Be Lived At The Time They Occur.
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Writing
Cat
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Ideologies Have No Heart Of Their Own. They're The Whores And Angels Of Our Striving Selves.
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Angel
Self
The Secret Intelligence Service I Knew Occupied Dusky Suites Of Little Rooms Opposite St James's Park Tube Station In London.
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In Itself, The Practice Of Deception Is Not Particularly Exacting; It Is A Matter Of Experience, Of Professional Expertise, It Is A Facility Most Of Us Can Acquire.
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Thinking
Treason Is Very Much A Matter Of Habit, Smiley Decided.
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Habit
Only Esmeralda Was Not Weeping. Instead She Wore That Wooden Look That Whites Mistake For Churlishenss Or Indifference. Woodrew Knew It Was Neither. It Was Familiarity. This How Real Life Is Constituted, It Said. This Is Grief And Hatred And People Hacked To Death. This Is The Everyday We Have Known Since We Were Born And You Wazungu Have Not.
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America Has Entered One Of Its Periods Of Historic Madness, But This Is The Worst I Can Remember.
America
Literature
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When You're My Age, You Have The Feeling Sometimes That You're Seeing The Show Come Round Again.
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Age
Sometimes
He Has The Gift Of Quiet.
Quiet
A Spy, Like A Writer, Lives Outside The Mainstream Population. He Steals His Experience Through Bribes And Reconstructs It.
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Literature
Survival...is An Infinite Capacity For Suspicion.
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Infinite
Capacity
The Cold War Provided The Perfect Excuse For Western Governments To Plunder And Exploit The Third World In The Name Of Freedom; To Rig Its Elections, Bribe Its Politicians, Appoint Its Tyrants And, By Every Sophisticated Means Of Persuasion And Interference, Stunt The Emergence Of Young Democracies In The Name Of Democracy.
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If You See The World As Gloomily As I See It, The Only Thing To Do Is Laugh Or Shoot Yourself.
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We Have Learned In Recent Years To Translate Almost All Of Political Life In Terms Of Conspiracy. And The Spy Novel, As Never Before, Really, Has Come Into Its Own.
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Smiley Was Soaked To The Skin And God As A Punishment Had Removed All Taxis From The Face Of London.
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Skins
London
I'm Really A Library Man, Or Second-hand Book Man.
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Men
In Every Operation There Is An Above The Line And A Below The Line. Above The Line Is What You Do By The Book. Below The Line Is How You Do The Job.
Jobs
Book
Lines
By Repetition, Each Lie Becomes An Irreversible Fact Upon Which Other Lies Are Constructed.
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Repetition
I Happen To Write By Hand. I Don't Even Type.
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Hands
Literature
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Distribution
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Childhood
Monsters
Detachment
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Suffering
Systematic
Thank Heaven, Though, One Of The Few Mistakes I Haven't Made Is To Talk About The Unwritten Book.
Mistake
Book
Writing
George Smiley: [quoting An Old Letter From Bill Haydon About Jim Prideaux] He Has That Heavy Quiet That Commands. He's My Other Half. Between Us We'd Make One Marvelous Man. He Asks Nothing Better Than To Be In My Company Or That Of My Wicked, Divine Friends, And I'm Vastly Tickled By The Compliment. He's Virgin, About Eight Foot Tall, And Built By The Same Firm That Did Stonehenge
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Eight
Feet
A Good Man Knows When To Sacrifice Himself, A Bad Man Survives But Loses His Soul.
Sacrifice
Men
Soul
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.
War
Pigs
America
No Problem Exists In Isolation, One Must First Reduce It To Its Basic Components, Then Tackle Each Component In Turn.
Firsts
Problem
Isolation
Wives?" 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.
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Volcanoes
Wife
Look... We're Getting To Be Old Men, And We've Spent Our Lives Looking For The Weaknesses In One Another's Systems. I Can See Through Eastern Values Just As You Can See Through Our Western Ones. Both Of Us, I Am Sure, Have Experienced Ad Nauseam The Technical Satisfactions Of This Wretched War. But Now Your Own Side Is Going To Shoot You. Don't You Think It's Time To Recognise That There Is As Little Worth On Your Side As There Is On Mine?
War
Men
Thinking
The More Identities A Man Has, The More They Express The Person They Conceal.
Men
Identity
Persons
It's The Oldest Question Of All, George. Who Can Spy On The Spies?
Spy
Our 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.
Children
Mistake
Home
The Trouble Is, When Professional Spies Go Out Of Their Way To Make A Definitive Statement About One Of Their Own, The Public Tends To Believe The Opposite: Which Puts Us All Back Where We Started.
Believe
Opposites
Spy
I Don't Know Whether It's Age Or Maturity, But I Certainly Find Myself Committed More And More To The Looser Forms Of Western Democracy At Any Price.
Maturity
Democracy
Age
What Do You Think Spies Are: Priests, Saints And Martyrs? They're A Squalid Procession Of Vain Fools, Traitors Too, Yes; Pansies, Sadists And Drunkards, People Who Play Cowboys And Indians To Brighten Their Rotten Lives.
Thinking
Cowboy
Play
Americans Believe That If You Know Something, You Should Do Something About It.
Believe
Literature
Should
It Is Also The Pardonable Vanity Of Lonely People Everywhere To Assume That They Have No Counterparts.
Lonely
Vanity
People
There Are Some Subjects That Can Only Be Tackled In Fiction.
Fiction
Literature
Subjects
I Was The British Spy Who Had Come Out Of The Woodwork And Told It How It Really Was, And Anything I Said To The Contrary Only Enforced The Myth. And Since I Was Writing For A Public Hooked On Bond And Desperate For The Antidote, The Myth Stuck.
Writing
Spy
Desperate
Home's Where You Go When You Run Out Of Homes.
Running
Home
Homecoming
People Who've Had Very Unhappy Childhoods Are Pretty Good At Inventing Themselves. If Nobody Invents You For Yourself, Nothing Is Left But To Invent Yourself For Others.
Unhappy Childhood
People
Literature
You Should Have Died When I Killed You.
Should Have
Literature
Should
All Men Are Born Free: Just Not For Long.
Men
Long
Born
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold Was The Work Of A Wayward Imagination Brought To The End Of Its Tether By Political Disgust And Personal Confusion. Fifty Years On, I Don't Associate The Book With Anything That Ever Happened To Me, Save For One Wordless Encounter At London Airport When A Worn-out, Middle-aged Military Kind Of Man In A Stained Raincoat Slammed A Handful Of Mixed Foreign Change On To The Bar And In Gritty Irish Accents Ordered Himself As Much Scotch As It Would Buy. In That Moment, Alec Leamas Was Born. Or So My Memory, Not Always A Reliable Informant, Tells Me.
Memories
Military
Book
I Think That Where I've Watched A Movie Go Wrong, It's Usually Because The Dread Committee Has Been Interfering With It.
Thinking
Dread
Committees
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.
War
Battle
Technique
I Taught Principally German Language And Literature At Eton. But Any Master With Private Pupils Must Be Prepared To Teach Anything They Ask For. That Can Be As Diverse As The Early Paintings Of Salvador Dali Or How Bumblebees Manage To Fly.
German Language
Bumblebees
Literature
But I Think The Real Tension Lies In The Relationship Between What You Might Call The Pursuer And His Quarry, Whether It's The Writer Or The Spy.
Real
Lying
Thinking
Love Is Whatever You Can Still Betray. Betrayal Can Only Happen If You Love.
Love
Betrayal
Betrayed
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.
Unique
Mind
Criminals
It Was A Charming Fantasy Of Romantics That The Spies Would Stop Spying, That Political Conflict Would End And Politicians Would Tell The Truth. Unfortunately That Has Not Been The Case.
Political
Democracy
Spy
Remember Graham Green's Dictum That Childhood Is The Bank Balance Of The Writer? I Think That All Writers Feel Alienated. Most Of Us Go Back To An Alienated Childhood In Some Way Or Another. I Know That I Do.
Thinking
Childhood
Balance
Every Writer Knows He Is Spurious; Every Fiction Writer Would Rather Be Credible Than Authentic.
Fiction
Knows
Fiction Writers
I Made A Series Of Wrong Decisions About Moderately Recent Books, And I've Sold The Rights To Studios For Ridiculous Amounts Of Money And The Films Have Never Been Made. That's The Saddest Thing Of All, Because They're Locked Up And No-one Else Can Make Them.
Book
Rights
Decision
I Don't Think It Is Given To Any Of Us To Be Impertinent To Great Religions With Impunity.
Thinking
Literature
Given
The Cold War Was Over Long Before It Was Officially Declared Dead.
War
Long
Literature
I Used To Think It Was Clever To Confuse Comedy With Tragedy. Now I Wish I Could Distinguish Them.
Clever
Thinking
Tragedy
People Like You Should Be Stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' She Mused Aloud, With A Puzzled Shake Of Her Wise Head. 'you Think You're Solving The World's Problems But Actually You're The Problem.
Wise
Thinking
People
The Pharmaceutical Corporations Are Engaged In The Systematic Corruption Of The Medical Profession, Country By Country
Country
Vaccines
Systematic
To Possess Another Language, Charlemagne Tells Us, Is To Possess Another Soul. German Is Such A Language. Once You Have It In Your Head, You Can Go There Anytime, You Can Close The Door, You Have A Refuge.
Doors
Soul
Language
Jesus Christ Only Had Twelve, You Know, And One Of Them Was A Double.
Jesus
Twelve
Christ
The Fact That You Can Only Do A Little Is No Excuse For Doing Nothing.
Littles
Doing Nothing
Facts
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.
Writing
Two
Twenties
I've Never Been Able To Write A Book Without One Very Strong Character In My Rucksack.
Strong
Book
Writing
Having Your Book Turned Into A Movie Is Like Seeing Your Oxen Turned Into Bouillon Cubes.
Movie
Book
Reading
I Mean, You Can't Be Less Ruthless Than The Opposition Simply Because Your Government's Policy Is Benevolent, Can You Now?
Mean
Government
Ruthless
People Are Very Secretive - Secret Even From Themselves.
People
Secret
Secretive
The One Thing You Can Bet Is That Spying Is Never Over. Spying Is Like The Wiring In This Building: It's Just A Question Of Who Takes It Over And Switches On The Lights. It Will Go On And On And On.
Light
Goes On
Building
Cheats, Liars And Criminals May Resist Every Blandishment While Respectable Gentlemen Have Been Moved To Appalling Treasons By Watery Cabbage In A Departmental Canteen.
Loyalty
Liars
Gentleman
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