As if Wives were Volcanoes

“A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.”
― John le Carré

“Home's where you go when you run out of homes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“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.”
― John le Carré

“Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.”
― John le Carré, The Looking Glass War

“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.”
― John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

“There are moments which are made up of too much stuff for them to be lived at the time they occur.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.”
― John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man

“The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous”
― John le Carré

“By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.”
― John le Carré

“The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.”
― John le Carré

“Unfortunately it is the weak who destroy the strong.”
― John le Carré

“I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“Survival...is an infinite capacity for suspicion.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“All men are born free: just not for long.”
― John le Carré, A Murder of Quality

“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.”
― John le Carré

“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.”
― John le Carré, The Constant Gardener

“After all, if you make your enemy look like a fool, you lose the justification for engaging him.”
― John le Carré

“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.”
― John le Carré

“You should have died when I killed you.”
― John le Carré

“Ideologies have no heart of their own. They're the whores and angels of our striving selves.”
― John le Carré

“There was nothing dishonourable 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.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“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.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“Let's die of it before we're too old.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“If you see the world as gloomily as I see it, the only thing to do is laugh or shoot yourself.”
― John le Carré

“It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

“It is also the pardonable vanity of lonely people everywhere to assume that they have no counterparts.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“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.”
― John le Carré, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy