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Quotes from Call for the Dead — John le Carré

1931–2020 England

← All quotes by John le Carré

10 quotes

I thought it would be valuable to record the events—even if they did not take place.

Call for the Dead (1961)

Chic, that’s what he is—a barmaid’s dream of a real gentleman.

Call for the Dead (1961)

I shall have to wear the special grin I reserve for bearing really disastrous tidings.

Call for the Dead (1961)

He was one of those world-builders who seem to do nothing but destroy: that’s all.

Call for the Dead (1961)

He knew how intelligent men could be broken by the stupidity of their superiors.

Call for the Dead (1961)

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

Call for the Dead (1961)

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.

Call for the Dead (1961)

The State is a dream, too, a symbol of nothing at all, an emptiness, a mind without a body, a game played with clouds in the sky. But States make war, don’t they, and imprison people?

Call for the Dead (1961)

He hated the Press as he hated advertising and television, he hated mass-media, the relentless persuasion of the twentieth century. Everything he admired or loved had been the product of intense individualism.

Call for the Dead (1961)

Why was London the only capital in the world that lost its personality at night? Smiley, as he pulled his coat more closely about him, could think of nowhere, from Los Angeles to Berne, which so readily gave up its daily struggle for identity.

Call for the Dead (1961)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: John le Carré (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.