“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“The most peaceble people will do the most terrible things when they're pushed.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“In a civilized country you can never tell.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life?”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Pain observed is journalistic pain. It's diplomatic pain. It's television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Arseholes who are expert at making something out of nothing [...] appeared equally capable of making nothing out of something”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“more cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paid-up pessimist, he knew he had none.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Over them, in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“I do not betray the confidence of friends and I require you to respect that fact and admire me for it. Enormously and all the time. Where secrets are concerned, compared to me, the grave is a chatterbox”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
John le Carré
Born place: in Poole, Dorset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 19, 1931
See more on GoodReads
“It seemed the more I knew about people the more I knew about the strange magic hidden in their hearts.”
― Rudolfo Anaya, quote from Bless Me, Ultima
“Those fruity drinks better have a lot of caffeine in them or I'll never make it through World Issues.”
― Lisi Harrison, quote from Invasion of the Boy Snatchers
“Whatever displeasure she felt was openly voiced, and quickly resolved, by either compromise or one partner’s acceptance of the other’s intractability.”
― Raymond E. Feist, quote from Silverthorn
“When you live in the city, you learn to take nothing for granted. Close your eyes for a moment, turn around to look at something else, and the thing that was before you is suddenly gone. Nothing lasts, you see, not even the thoughts inside you. And you mustn't waste your time looking for them. Once a thing is gone, that is the end of it.”
― Paul Auster, quote from In the Country of Last Things
“There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When an amphibian accustomed to the black depths rises above a certain level, when the pressure to which it adapts itself is lifted, the body bursts inwardly. Are we not familiar with this spectacle in the human being also? The norsemen who went berserk, the malay who runs amuck—are these not examples of implosion and explosion? When the cup is full it runs over. but when the cup and that which it contains are one substance, what then? There are moments when the elixir of life rises to such overbrimming splendor that the soul spills over. In the seraphic smile of the madonnas the soul is seen to flood the psyche. The moon of the face becomes full; the equation is perfect. A minute, a half minute, a second later, the miracle has passed. something intangible, something inexplicable, was given out—and received. In the life of a human being it may happen that the moon never comes to the full. In the life of some human beings it would seem, indeed, that the only mysterious phenomenon observable is that of perpetual eclipse. In the case of those afflicted with genius, whatever the form it may take, we are almost frightened to observe that there is nothing but a continuous waxing and waning of the moon. Rarer still are the anomalous ones who, having come to the full, are so terrified by the wonder of it that they spend the rest of their lives endeavoring to stifle that which gave them birth and being. The war of the mind is the story of the soul-split. When the moon was at full there were those who could not accept the dim death of diminution; they tried to hang full-blown in the zenith of their own heaven. They tried to arrest the action of the law which was manifesting itself through them, through their own birth and death, in fulfillment and transfiguration. Caught between the tides they were sundered; the soul departed the body, leaving the simulacrum of a divided self to fight it out in the mind. Blasted by their own radiance they live forever the futile quest of beauty, truth and harmony. Depossessed of their own effulgence they seek to possess the soul and spirit of those to whom they are attracted. They catch every beam of light; they reflect with every facet of their hungry being. instantly illumined, When the light is directed towards them, they are also speedily extinguished. The more intense the light which is cast upon them the more dazzling—and blinding—they appear. Especially dangerous are they to the radiant ones; it is always towards these bright and inexhaustible luminaries that they are most passionately drawn…”
― Henry Miller, quote from Sexus
Dispatches from the...
If Forever Comes
Queen of Shadows
Fortunata and Jacint...
Diving Into the Wrec...
The Second Jungle Bo...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
