Quotes from A Perfect Spy

John le Carré ·  608 pages

Rating: (13.3K votes)


“Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


“You could be the perfect spy. All you need is a cause.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


“He was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


“A vida tem de ser paga. A vida é fazer-se o que tem de ser feito, mesmo que se morra por causa disso.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


“Mas em diplomacia nada é duradouro, nada é absoluto e uma conspiração entre assassinos não é motivo para interromper o fluxo da conversa”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy



“In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


“And what am I thinking? I am thinking that a man who cannot speak clearly cannot think clearly.”
― John le Carré, quote from A Perfect Spy


About the author

John le Carré
Born place: in Poole, Dorset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 19, 1931
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“For the concept of the supplement - which here determines that of the representative image - harbors within itself two significations whose cohabitation is as strange as it is necessary. The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude, the fullest measure of presence. But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as one fills a void. If it represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence. The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself. The supplement will always be the moving of the tongue or acting through the hands of others. In it everything is brought together: Progress as the possibility of perversion, regression toward an evil that is not natural and that adheres to the power of substitution, that permits us to absent ourselves and act by proxy, through the hands of others. Through the written. This substitution always has the form of the sign. The scandal is that the sign, the image, or the representer, become forces and make "the world move". Blindness to the supplement is the law. We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace, which cannot take the scent into account, has already taught of the trace, which cannot not take the scent into account, has already taught us that it was impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely, Wherever we are: in a text where we already believe ourselves to be.”
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