John Quotes

People like you should be stopped, Mr. Woodrow,' she mused aloud, with a puzzled shake of her wise head. 'You think you're solving the world's problems but actually you're the problem.

When you're my age, you have the feeling sometimes that you're seeing the show come round again.

I've always had difficulties with female characters.

I happen to write by hand. I don't even type.

Luck's just another word for destiny... either you make your own or you're screwed.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

What else has a journalist to do these days, after all, but report life's miseries?

There will be no war, but in the pursuit of principle no stone will be left standing.

There is a big difference between fighting the cold war and fighting radical Islam. The rules have changed and we haven't.

[My novels] introduce levels of intelligence ... moral doubt [and] self-doubt, which may not pertain [to real-world espionage].

The Cold War was over long before it was officially declared dead.

I move my lips when I read -- I'm painfully slow -- so I like really good English.

I've got more than one string to my bow, and I thought I'd give this one a twang.

Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

Let's die of it before we're too old.

We have learned in recent years to translate almost all of political life in terms of conspiracy. And the spy novel, as never before, really, has come into its own.

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.

Fools, most linguists. Damn all to say in one language, so they learn another and say damn all in that.

The trouble is, when professional spies go out of their way to make a definitive statement about one of their own, the public tends to believe the opposite: which puts us all back where we started.

It was a charming fantasy of romantics that the spies would stop spying, that political conflict would end and politicians would tell the truth. Unfortunately that has not been the case.

More particularly, having a largely German-oriented education has made me very responsive to 19th-century German literature.

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.

I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire.

It's death, that's what I'm suffering from. The systematic encroachment of the big D.

Americans believe that if you know something, you should do something about it.

God is in his Heaven and the first night was a wow.

The longing we have to communicate cleanly and directly with people is always obstructed by qualifications and often with concern about how our messages will be received.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end.

On one hand we go like hell for every terror cell we can find, we penetrate it, we destroy it. On the other hand, there is a much bigger need for a political solution.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit.

For all the flailing and huffing and puffing, there is a kind of fatality about the process of war-making and the excuses we find for it, the consolation of belligerence in politics.

A good deed is a good deed.

I've got twins and a lovely wife and a great life and I don't want to miss that. So if I'm going to miss that it's got to be for something really good.

I like some time away to recharge the batteries, not only physically, but emotionally so that I get to the point where I'm just dying to direct again and then that's the right time to do it again.

My style is all to myself.

I want to play music when I want, write a song if I want or watch a baseball game if I want.

I am a happy man. I've had a good life.

But I don't want to do no big tours or go out on the road.

No man will ever be a big executive who feels that he must, either openly or under cover, follow up every order he gives and see that it is done-nor will he ever develop a capable assistant.

Oh, I've got the prettiest mother. I've got the nicest mother. That's what I tell everybody. I say I've got the sweetest mother in the world.

Got through it without fluffing, that's the main thing any actor can hope for.

It's really about making the best music you can make. It's really about working hard.

There's a certain confidence that comes with being sure about the way the world works.

Critics like to describe and categorize things, and categories often have a way of limiting people.

Sometimes I just think people are haters. And if they're haters, you can listen to what they have to say but you have to take it with a grain of salt.

You can always find a stray negative comment on the Internet. It's like everybody loves to put negative comments on the Internet under the cloak of anonymity.

Sometimes there's that perfect moment when the crowd, the music, the energy of the room come together in a way that brings me to tears.