Le Carre

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.

It's part of a writer's profession, as it's part of a spy's profession, to prey on the community to which he's attached, to take away information - often in secret - and to translate that into intelligence for his masters.

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.

The disciplines of storytelling require that I shape, out of the monotony and everyday life of espionage, something that has a beginning, a middle and an end. That's already contrary to the reality.
- All from John le Carré

About: David Cornwell was born at Poole, Dorset, England on Oct19 in 1931. His father was engaged in swindles and spent time in prison for fraud, his mother left when David was five. Disliking the local school, he convinced his father to send him to Switzerland. He spent a couple of years at Berne University, then served in the Austrian army before returning to England. Attracted to espionage as a career, he studied modern languages at Lincoln College, Oxford before he joined the Foreign Service and was posted to Germany. The infamous double agent Kim Philby blew his cover, and Cornwell started writing spy novels based on his experience under the name John le Carré. These quotes deal with spies, writers, and the parallels between the two trades.