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ab13543
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Yes, dear Father. But has it ever occurred to you that by [your feelings] you destroy them? How many times can we say sorry before we don't feel sorry anymore?
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feelings
i-m-sorry
john-le-carre
sorry
emotions
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John le Carré |
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c291868
|
He knew then what it was that Liz had given him; the thing that he would have to go back and find if ever he got home to England; it was the caring about little things - the faith in ordinary life; the simplicity that made you break up a bit of bread into a paper bag, walk down to the beach and throw it to the gulls. It was this respect for triviality which he had never been allowed to possess; whether it was bread of the seagulls or love
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trivial
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John le Carré |
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3d70d3e
|
It struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.
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John le Carré |
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9c661be
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It was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise. They realized that nothing happened when we grew up: no blinding light on the road to Damascus, no sudden feeling of maturity.
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John le Carré |
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bdd5e5e
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God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.
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John le Carré |
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378876b
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In a civilized country you can never tell.
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John le Carré |
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53f8bfd
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Every man has his personal devil waiting for him somewhere.
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John le Carré |
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1d40cbe
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Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism. ...when had mass philosophies ever brought benefit or wisdom?
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philosophy
wisdom
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John le Carré |
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36536d0
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Look, we are getting to be old men, and we've spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another's systems... Don't you think it's time to recognise that there is as little worth on your side as there is on mine?
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logical-thinking
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John le Carré |
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b253fca
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What do you think spies are: priests, saints, and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists, and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? I'd have killed Mundt if I could, I hate his guts; but not now. It so happens that they need him. They need him so that the great moronic mass th..
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John le Carré |
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226f623
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Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life?
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John le Carré |
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57b8453
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But gossip must see its characters in black and white, equip them with sins and motives easily conveyed in the shorthand of conversation.
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John le Carré |
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957fb8a
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He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors, how weeks of patient work night and day could be cast aside by such a man
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John le Carré |
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387075d
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Give a man a car of his own and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.
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John le Carré |
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bf60842
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With people you see in them what you already know.
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John le Carré |
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1c9b47b
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Smiley contemplates graffiti:]'Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.' The assertion caused him a moment's indecision. 'Oh, but society does,' he wanted to reply; 'society is an association of minorities.
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John le Carré |
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191071f
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I used to think it was clever to confuse comedy with tragedy. Now i wish i could distinguish them.
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John le Carré |
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d1e182e
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The monstrosity of this, reaching Smiley through a thickening wall of spiritual exhaustion, left him momentarily speechless.
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monstrosity
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John le Carré |
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6d3d6bb
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In Lacon's world, direct questions were the height of bad taste, but direct answers were worse.
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John le Carré |
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330e5d9
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A man who lives a part, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself the practice of deception is not particularly exacting. It is a matter of experience, a professional expertise. It is a facility most of us can acquire. But while a confidence trickster, a play actor or a gambler can return from his performance to the ranks of his admirers, the secret agent enjoys no such relief. For him, deception is fir..
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political
thriller
spy
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John le Carré |
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1b82068
|
He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.
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John le Carré |
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bd89fd7
|
Few men can resist expressing their appetites when they're making a fantasy about themselves.
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John le Carré |
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b6f404c
|
Middle children weep longer than their brothers and sisters. Over her mother's shoulder, stilling her pains and her injured pride, Jackie Lacon watched the party leave. First, two men she had not seen before: one tall, one short and dark. They drove off in a small green van. No one waved to them, she noticed, or even said goodbye. Next, her father left in his own car; lastly a blond, good-looking man and a short fat one in an enormous overc..
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sorrow
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John le Carré |
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98601d1
|
What would it be like really and absolutely to believe? (...) To know, really and absolutely know, that there's a Divine Being not set in time or space who reads your thoughts better than you ever did, and probably before you even have them? To believe that God sends you to war, God bends the path of bullets, decides which of his children will die, or have their legs blown off, or make a few hundred million on Wall Street, depending on toda..
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John le Carré |
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5641ea5
|
There are always a dozen reasons for doing nothing," Ann liked to say--it was a favourite apologia, indeed, for many of her misdemeanours. "There is only one reason for doing something. And that's because you want to." Or have to? Ann would furiously deny it: coercion, she would say, is just another word for doing what you want; or for not doing what you are afraid of."
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John le Carré |
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492d4ab
|
And gradually it dawned on him, if a dawning can take place in total blackens, that his life had consisted of a run of rehearsals for a play he had failed to take part in. And that what he needed to do from now on, if there was going to be a now on, was abandon his morbid quest for order, and treat himself to a little chaos, on the grounds that while order was demonstrably no substitute for happiness, chaos might open the way to it.
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John le Carré |
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0052d3d
|
However closely we live together, at whatever time of day or night we sound the deepest thoughts in one another, we know nothing.
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John le Carré |
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61c9dad
|
He became a solitary, belonging to that tragic class of active men prematurely deprived of activity; swimmers barred from the water or actors banished from the stage.
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John le Carré |
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a5c8412
|
in moments of crisis our thoughts do not run consecutively but rather sweep over us in waves or intuition and experience ...
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intuition
experience
thinking
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John le Carré |
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fb9a755
|
Can't you see it's the same? The same guns, the same children dying in the streets? Only the dream has changed, the blood is the same colour. Is that what you want?
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John le Carré |
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79a8f77
|
Smiley was the oddest. You thought, to look at him, that he couldn't cross the road alone, but you might as well have offered protection to a hedgehog.
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John le Carré |
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3936365
|
Sometimes you do it to save face, thought Jerry, other times you just do it because you haven't done your job unless you've scared yourself to death. Other times again, you go in order to remind yourself that survival is a fluke. But mostly you go because the others go; for ; and because in order to belong you must share.
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reporting
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John le Carré |
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1e13799
|
She had the experience to suffer with discretion.
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contentment
dignity
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John le Carré |
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c315a99
|
He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.
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John le Carré |
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6007783
|
There's no way out," he announced with satisfaction, "and no amount of wishful dreaming will produce one. The demon won't go back in its bottle, the face-off is for ever, the embrace gets tighter and the toys cleverer with every generation, and there's no such thing for either side as enough security. Not for the main players, not for the nasty little newcomers who each year run themselves up a suitcase bomb and join the club. We get tired ..
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war
nuclear-weapons
spy
russia
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John le Carré |
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1e37bc1
|
Haydon had found his charm again. He could do that at the drop of a hat. He drew you and he repelled you. I remember that exactly. He danced all ways for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.
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espionage
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John le Carré |
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ed34d3a
|
He hated to be alone, but people bored him. Being alone was like being tired, but unable to sleep.
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John le Carré |
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d7e9f97
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And your wife, she's in the pink and so on?" His expressions were also boyish. "Very bonny, thank you," said Smiley, trying gallantly to respond in kind."
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John le Carré |
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e8ae9a1
|
You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.
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John le Carré |
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58ad3da
|
When Schulmann talked, he fired off conflicting ideas like a spread of bullets, then waited to see which ones went home and which came back at him. The sidekick's voice followed like a stretcher-party, softly collecting up the dead. (...) Sound oil policy, sound economics, sound everything. Justice it isn't. (part I, chapter 1)
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John le Carré |
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6fdb342
|
what woman has ever stopped by a want of information? She felt. And despised him for not acting in accordance with her feelings.
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John le Carré |
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c50ed23
|
It was his shoes, he noticed to his pleasure, that she most objected to; and he thought: bloody good, that's what shoes are for.
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John le Carré |
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5bf9488
|
Even his Englishness was a well-kept secret.
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John le Carré |
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78d5da9
|
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. What do you think of i?
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John le Carré |