John le Carre in quotes: "Intelligence work has one moral law -- it is justified by results." - "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1963) "Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray." - Adrian Haldane, in "The Looking Glass War" (1965) "The more identities a man has, the more they express the person they conceal." - "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" (1974) "A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world." - "The Honourable Schoolboy" (1977) "You are a perfect spy. All you need is a cause." - Axel, the Czech spymaster, addressing Magnus Pym, in "A Perfect Spy" (1986) "Now we had defeated Communism, we were going to have to set about defeating capitalism." - Ned, the main character in "The Secret Pilgrim" (1990). "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." - Commentary by Le Carre in the Times newspaper in January 2003 in the buildup to the Iraq War. "Apart from spying, I have in my time sold bathtowels, got divorced, washed elephants, run away from school, decimated a flock of Welsh sheep with a twenty-five pound shell because I was too stupid to understand the gunnery officer's instructions, taught children in a special school." - From the author's website "I was asked so many times why I chose this ridiculous name, then the writer's imagination came to my help. I saw myself riding over Battersea Bridge, on top of a bus, looking down at a tailor's shop... And it was called something of this sort -- le Carré. That satisfied everybody for years. But lies don't last with age. I find a frightful compulsion towards truth these days. And the truth is, I don't know." - Interview with The Paris Review, 1996 "I hate the telephone. I can't type. I ply my trade by hand. I live on a Cornish cliff and hate cities. Three days and nights in a city are about my maximum." - From the author's website ri/afm/phz/gle