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"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."
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"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind."
"The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers."
"The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion."
"That's my town,' Joaquin said. 'What a fine town, but how the buena gente, the good people of that town, have suffered in this war.' Then, his face grave, 'There they shot my father. My mother. My brother-in-law and now my sister.' 'What barbarians,' Robert Jordan said. How many times had he heard this? How many times had he watched people say it with difficulty? How many times had he seen their eyes fill and their throats harden with the difficulty of saying my father, or my brother, or my mother, or my sister? He could not remember how many times he heard them mention their dead in this way. Nearly always they spoke as this boy did now; suddenly and apropos of the mention of the town and always you said, 'What barbarians."
"So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community and until an equivalent discipline is organized I believe that war must have its way."
"In the matter of war, ask this question to yourself and to your own fellow country men: Have you ever seen any politician in your country without legs, without arms, without eyes after war? No! You can't see such a thing because honourless politicians always stay in the safe ports while they send others to the zone of death!"
Explore more quotes by John Le Carre
"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."
"A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it."
"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."
"Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book."
"Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."
"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."
"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."
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