A Quote by John le Carre

'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.

John le Carre

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Imagination Brought Came Cold Confusion Disgust End Personal Political Spy Work

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John le Carre
English - Writer
Born: October 19, 1931

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.

John le Carre

Of John Le Carre's books, I've only read 'The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,' and I haven't read anything by Graham Greene, but I've heard a great deal about how 'Your Republic Is Calling You' reminded English readers of those two writers. I don't really have any particular interest in Cold War spy novels.

Kim Young-ha

I always loved the idea of a spy movie and part of it came from my personal love of spy movies. It started when I was growing up as a little kid in the 60s.

John Lasseter

I wrote 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold' at the age of 30 under intense, unshared personal stress and in extreme privacy. As an intelligence officer in the guise of a junior diplomat at the British Embassy in Bonn, I was a secret to my colleagues, and much of the time to myself.

John le Carre

The merit of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' then - or its offence, depending where you stood - was not that it was authentic, but that it was credible.

John le Carre

In 'A Scanner Darkly,' as in 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,' all intersubjective relations devolve into webs of suspicion and betrayal.

Mark Fisher

I think in some ways what Snowden is, is he's a mix of a cold war spy novel and post-9/11 spy novel.

Alex Berenson

When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.

Annie Lennox

Things need to be properly named. Political confusion starts with terminology confusion. Islamism implies some sort of political and social plan for Muslim people. In that classification, we find different categories.

Tariq Ramadan

Re-reading is much underrated. I've read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold once every five years since I was 15. I only started to understand it the third time.

Malcolm Gladwell

I think I was 13 years old when my father put in my hands 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.' It was the first real adult book I ever read, and it opened a new world.

Stellan Skarsgard

Tradition is like the tether which prevents an animal from getting a blade of grass beyond the length of that tether

E. W. Bullinger

You're often looking at writing from writers who, for the most part, are working in forms that traditionally fit into other genres. But sometimes, in the midst of their better-known stuff, there's this wayward thing, and because it's wayward it isn't considered representative of their work, so it falls through the cracks.

John D'Agata

Working with Harry Lambert has brought so much fun and imagination into my personal style.

Emma Corrin

Le Carre's voice - patrician, cold, brilliant and amused - was perfect for the wilderness-of-mirrors undertow of the Cold War, and George Smiley is the all-time harassed bureaucrat of spy fiction.

Alan Furst

I tell you, Mr. Okada, a cold beer at the end of the day is the best thing life has to offer. Some choosy people say that a too cold beer doesn't taste good, but I couldn't disagree more. The first beer should be so cold you can't even taste it. The second one should be a little less chilled, but I want that first one to be like ice. I want it to be so cold my temples throb with pain. This is my own personal preference of course.

Haruki Murakami

A Quote by John le Carre

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