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d746178
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Either she knew exactly, or not at all, the power of each slight gesture she made.
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John le Carré |
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c366293
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It took Jonathan a moment to realize that Jeds was the woman. Not Jed, a single man, but Jeds a single woman in all her varieties.
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John le Carré |
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14c28a5
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age.
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John le Carré |
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d4c97de
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was from us they learnt the secret of life: that we grow old without growing wise.
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John le Carré |
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9298b0a
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sauntering
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John le Carré |
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61b74e4
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You see, for us it does," Fiedler continued. "I myself would have put a bomb in a restaurant if it brought us farther along the road. Afterwards I would draw the balance--so many women, so many children; and so far along the road. But Christians--and yours is a Christian society--Christians may not draw the balance."
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John le Carré |
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86d2ef8
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Espionage is not a cricket game
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John le Carré |
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f900bec
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Some people keep canaries, some people join the Party,
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John le Carré |
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b72dd3b
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Then the people in this prison are intellectuals?" The woman smiled. "Yes," she said, "they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state. Do you know what Khrushchev said about the counterrevolution in Hungary?" Liz shook her head. She must show interest, she must make the woman talk. "He said it would never have happened if a couple of writers had been shot in time."
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John le Carré |
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53d9577
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Are you going to eat that?" she inquired, indicating the food on the desk. Liz shook her head. "Then I must," she declared, with a grotesque attempt at reluctance. "They have given you a potato. You must have a lover in the kitchen." The humor of this observation sustained her until she had finished the last of Liz's meal."
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John le Carré |
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d217fdb
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After a lifetime of living by his wits and his considerable memory, he had given himself full time to the profession of forgetting.
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John le Carré |
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7ad795c
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When we can't hurt our enemies, we hurt our friends.
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John le Carré |
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d5e5b73
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turned on the BBC World News and switched it off again. Half-truths. Quarter-truths. What the world really knows about itself, it doesn't dare say.
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John le Carré |
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416188d
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The opposite of love is not hate but apathy
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John le Carré |
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ef519ba
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doubtful, we shall know where the
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John le Carré |
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657ad1e
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without the bonds of ideological conflict to restrain us any more, our troubles are just beginning.
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John le Carré |
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9b7ba8c
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Yes, well, I always assume that businessmen are crooks, don't you, Harry? I'm sure we all do.
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John le Carré |
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579ba32
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he wondered whether there was any love between human beings that did not rest upon some sort of self-delusion;
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John le Carré |
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d5253e3
|
When God finished putting together Dicky Roper, He took a deep breath and shuddered a bit, then He ran up our Jonathan to restore the ecological balance.
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John le Carré |
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523b041
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What in Britain is called the Special Relationship, in Germany is called treason.
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John le Carré |
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efabfd9
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has delegated swathes of its own foreign policy to its spies, a thing the United States has done rather too frequently in recent years.
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John le Carré |
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9892af5
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The bad dream turned out to be one that a lot of people in the world were sharing, since it asked the same old question that we are asking ourselves fifty years later: how far can we go in the rightful defense of our Western values without abandoning them along the way?
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John le Carré |
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235c46f
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When two people have decided to go to bed with each other, what passes between them before the event is a matter of form rather than of content.
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John le Carré |
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5a520ec
|
You don't care much for Avery do you..."
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John le Carré |
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0aa76af
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Strange to wander in the mist, each is alone. No tree knows his neighbour. Each is alone.
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John le Carré |
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2246798
|
En vandaar dwaalde hij af naar een meningsverschil met Friedrich Schillers hoogdravende theorie dat wat de goden tevergeefs bestreden menselijke domheid was. Daar was Toby het niet mee eens. Dat was voor niemand een excuus, of hij nu een god of een mens was. Waar de goden en alle redelijke mensen zich tevergeefs tegen verzetten was helemaal geen domheid. Dat was pure, moedwillige, kloterige onverschilligheid voor ieders belangen behalve die..
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John le Carré |
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3b520f1
|
I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over-organise. Abroad that passes for efficiency.
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John le Carré |
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bbc3629
|
suppose you had done that, suppose it were true -- [...] would you kill a man, an innocent man--' 'Mundt's a killer himself.' 'Suppose he wasn't. Suppose it were me they wanted to kill: would London do it?' 'It depends ... it depends on the need ...' 'Ah,' said Fiedler contentedly, 'it depends on the need. Like Stalin, in fact. The traffic accident and the statistics. That is a great relief.' 'Why?' '[...] We're all the same, you know, that..
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John le Carré |
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9201c7e
|
It is a prison for those who fail to recognize socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march. Traitors," she concluded briefly. "But what have they done?" "We cannot build communism without doing away with individualism. You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site."
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John le Carré |
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cae3c14
|
Sometimes she thought Alec was right - you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function.
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John le Carré |
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43cee5c
|
When people panic, he said, they panic upward. They make for lifts, escalators, stairs, any way to go up, not down. By the time the boys go in, anyone who is not too petrified to move is in the attic.
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John le Carré |
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4580404
|
Yet in diplomacy nothing lasts, nothing is absolute, a conspiracy to murder is no grounds for endangering the flow of conversation.
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John le Carré |
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7ee139a
|
And in his customary corner, the awesome Rocker, Superintendent of Police, ex-Palestine, ex-Kenya, ex-Malaya, ex-Fiji, an implacable warhorse with a beer, one set of slightly reddened knuckles, and a weekend copy of the South China Morning Post.
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John le Carré |
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6793f6b
|
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.
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John le Carré |
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3d3c66a
|
Luck's just another word for destiny...either you make your own or you're screwed.
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John le Carré |
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44ed872
|
If you're in a hole, don't dig, they say.
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John le Carré |
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0df1498
|
When you assimilate, you choose.
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John le Carré |
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56c8a8f
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Elections are a Western jerk-off.
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John le Carré |
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5ad2428
|
Why is it that so many men of small stature have more courage than men of size?
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John le Carré |
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fb3f6d2
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The friends of my friends are my friends.
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John le Carré |
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59e6b41
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Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.
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John le Carré |
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215c856
|
Nothing in life... even a few broken bones, is without its reward.
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John le Carré |
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b9a37b8
|
In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.
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John le Carré |