Author Birthday – 19 October – John le Carré

John le Carré was born on 19 October 1931 and died on 12 December 2020.

John le Carré Quotes

1. The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
2. Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
3. I’m in the business of storytelling, not message making.
4. I think the first thing you’ve got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.
5. 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.
6. It’s part of a writer’s profession, as it’s part of a spy’s profession, to prey on the community to which he’s attached, to take away information – often in secret – and to translate that into intelligence for his masters, whether it’s his readership or his spy masters. And I think that both professions are perhaps rather lonely.
7. Completing a book, it’s a little like having a baby.
8. 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.
9. I use the furniture of espionage to amuse the reader, to make the reader listen to me, because 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.
10. A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

John le Carré was a British author best known for his realistic espionage novels. He worked for the British intelligence services during the 1950s and 1960s while writing in his spare time. Le Carré began writing professionally in 1961. His breakthrough came with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which became an international bestseller. He then left MI6 to become a full-time writer. Le Carré published 26 novels and one memoir. Drawing on his experience in intelligence, he portrayed espionage as a world of double agents, defectors, safe houses, and moral uncertainty. Unlike the glamorous spies often found in fiction, his characters were lonely and alienated, caught between competing loyalties. His novels explored betrayal, loyalty, power, and the moral compromises made in the name of national security. Many of his works were adapted for television and film. Le Carré later wrote the bestselling memoir The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life. His final novel, Silverview, was published posthumously in 2021. He declined all British-based honours during his lifetime.

Source for Image: Author’s Website

by Amanda Patterson
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