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"If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. 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."
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"Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid."
"Books can now be on the stands within days from delivery of a formatted manuscript, and often are."
"A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books."
Explore more quotes by John Le Carre
"I think I'm in the same mood as ever, but in some ways more mature. I guess you could say that, at 65, when you've seen the world shape up as I have, there are only two things you can do: laugh or kill yourself."
"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."
"Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news."
"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."
"A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it."
"Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic."
"I made a series of wrong decisions about moderately recent books, and I've sold the rights to studios for ridiculous amounts of money and the films have never been made. That's the saddest thing of all, because they're locked up and no one else can make them."
"Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book."
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