Don't give it to them all at once, make them work for it. Confuse them with detail, leave things out, go back on your tracks. Be testy, be cussed, be difficult. Drink like a fish; don't give way on the ideology, they won't trust that. They want to deal with a man they've bought; they want the clash of opposites, Alec, not some half-cock convert.

— John le Carré

Do you know what love is? I'll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.

— John le Carré

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

— John le Carré

Give a man a car of his own, and he leaves humility and common sense behind him in the garage.

— John le Carré

Gossip till the cows come home.

— John le Carré

Hayden 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 always for you, playing your emotions against each other because he had none of his own.

— John le Carré

He had the nerve not to drink in a University where you proved your manhood by being drunk most of your first year.

— John le Carré

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

— John le Carré

He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.

— John le Carré

His intuition was luminous from the instant you met him. So was his intelligence. A lot of actors act intelligent, but Philip was the real thing: a shining, artistic polymath with an intelligence that came at you like a pair of headlights and enveloped you from the moment he grabbed your hand, put a huge arm round your neck and shoved a cheek against yours; or if the mood took him, hugged you to him like a big, pudgy schoolboy, then stood and beamed at you while he took stock of the effect. (About Philip Seymour Hoffman)

— John le Carré