English - Writer | October 19, 1931 -
The Secret Intelligence Service I knew occupied dusky suites of little rooms opposite St James's Park Tube station in London.
John le Carre
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I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.
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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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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.
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To give the best of the day to your work is most important.
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I do believe very much in movie as a one-man-show. I think that where I've watched movie go wrong, it's usually because the dread committee has been interfering with it.
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I mean, I'm in the business of storytelling, not message making.
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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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Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable. That didn't happen in the West.
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Writers are two-home men - they want a place outside and a place within.
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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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It's necessary to understand what real intelligence work is. It will never cease. It's absolutely essential that we have it. At its best, it is simply the left arm of healthy governmental curiosity. It brings to a strong government what it needs to know. It's the collection of information, a journalistic job, if you will, but done in secret.
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