Top 86 Quotes by John le Carre

If you're growing up in a chaotic world without reason, your instinct is to become a performer and control the circumstances around you. You lead from weakness into strength; you have an undefended back.

In my day, MI6 - which I called the Circus in the books - stank of wartime nostalgia. People were defined by secret cachet: one man did something absolutely extraordinary in Norway; another was the darling of the French Resistance. We didn't even show passes to go in and out of the building.