John le Carre

-A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

-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.

-In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.

-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.

-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.


-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.


''Graham Greene once referred to a chip of ice that has to be in the writer's heart. And that is the strain: that you must abstain from relationships and yet at the same time engage in them. There you have, I think, the real metaphysical relationship between the writer and the spy."