Len Deighton Quotes

Do you ever make silly mistakes? It is one of my very few creative activities.

Perhaps all fear is worse than reality, just as all hope is better than fulfilment.

What Douglas had once seen as the attractive over-confidence of youth, now looked more like unyielding selfishness.

When they ask me to become president of the United States I'm going to say, "Except for Washington D.C.

Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.

He had a long thin nose, a moustache like flock wallpaper, sparse, carefully combed hair, and the complexion of a Hovis loaf.

That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.

Here in Prague they say that although the traffic police are communists the drivers are fascists, which would be all right if it were not that the pedestrians are anarchists.

England's civil war had ended in a consensus as the English discovered that they hated foreigners more than they hated their own countrymen.

When the end is lawful the means are also lawful,

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

because morning gives a dimension of magic to any place it was soft and sharp at the same time.

Why do these people love you, Archer? Is it simply because you show little or no response to their affection?

You’re joking, sir.’ ‘I never joke, Chico. The truth is quite adequately hilarious.

bis peccare in bello non licet – in war two blunders aren’t permitted.

Neither was this the ordinary world of supply and demand; it was a world of abundance.

I never really trust drinking water anywhere but Scotland; and I’ve never been to Scotland. I

I think Jay is in import and export business as his cards say, but he finally found that the second most valuable commodity today is information." "And?" "The most valuable?" "People with information," I suggested.

Perhaps hell is like that; a discordant confusion of anxious souls. Some argued, some slept, some shouted, some wept, some wrote, some sketched and many conspired about their coming interrogation. But mostly they did no more than stare into space, eyes unfocused as they tried to see tomorrow.

It doesn’t take much to make the daily round with one’s employer work smoothly. A couple of ‘yessirs’ when you know that ‘not on your life’ is the thing to say. A few expressions of doubt about things you’ve spent your life perfecting. Forgetting to make use of the information that negates his hastily formed but deliciously convenient theories. It doesn’t take much but it takes about 98.5 per cent more than I’ve ever considered giving

Anyone can write one book; for instance even politicians do it! Starting a second book reveals an intention to be a professional writer

It’s easy to forgive the summer rain; like first love, white lies or blarney, there’s no malignity in it.

who draws a sword against a prince must throw away the scabbard’.

His profusion of long lank yellow hair hung heavily across his head like a Shrove Tuesday mishap.

rather split his trousers than an infinitive.

Husbands are a by-product of marriage,’ said Harvey. ‘A waste product,’ corrected Mercy Newbegin.

his face was 11 A.M. November 11th.

Communist," he repeated. "You may have heard someone in a concentration admit to being a murderer and many agreed that they had been spies. A prisoner would sometimes even confess to having at one time - for a short while - been a Jew. But a communist, no. No one would ever let that word pass their lips.

Tessa was sincere but shallow; she was loving but mercurial; she was an exhibitionist without enough confidence to be an actor. While Fiona displayed all the characteristics of elder children: stability, confidence, intellect in abundance, and that cold reserve with which to judge all the shortcomings of the world.

He remembered the PM saying that every Russian is at heart a chess-player, and every American at heart a public-relations man. Well, Bret Rensselaer’s zeal did nothing to disprove that one. The sheer audacity of the scheme plus Bret’s enthusiasm was enough to persuade him that it was worth a try. Bret nodded to acknowledge the compliment.

Did you ever say hello to a girl you almost married long ago? Did she smile the same captivating smile, and give your arm a hug in a gesture you’d almost forgotten? Did the wrinkles as she smiled make you wonder what marvellous times you’d missed? That’s how I felt about Berlin every time I came back here.

I’d long ago learned that it is only the very devout who toy with heresy. It’s only the Jesuit who complains of the Pope, only the devoted parent who ridicules his child, only the super rich who pick up pennies from the gutter. And in East Berlin it is only the truly faithful who speak treason with such self-assurance.

Summer rain is cleaner than winter rain. Winter rain strikes hard upon the granite, but summer rain is sibilant soft upon the leaves.

Or was the truth - like so many truths - not any one of the envisaged possibilities?

I hurt, therefore I am.

I would still not know that Finland had a cuisine, let alone that Kalakukko, a fish pie incorporating spiky bones and heads, was a cherished part of it. So

but for Daphne, and her neighbours’ travels, I would still not know that Finland had a cuisine,

what it could do by patrolling systematically

Enrolment is tricky. You are telling lies to highly skilled liars.

Life is worth nothing, life is worth nothing, It always starts with crying and with crying ends. And that’s why, in this world, life is worth nothing.

waiting at the bus stop. Only then did he feel safe. He turned abruptly

The only thing a man has to know about women is that he’ll never know anything about them.

For fear is so unwelcome that it comes only in disguise, and guilt is its favourite one.

I’ve been taking things too seriously for years,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid it makes me a difficult man to live with. But I’ve stayed alive, sweetheart. And that means a lot to me.

Don’t explain,’ I said. ‘Leave me something to be mystified about.

Like all women she was tyrannized by her biology.

Time used to be the panacea for everything, but nowadays our sins are remembered on computers, and random-accessed memories do not fade.

You should never have told them,’ said Dicky, who could always be relied upon for excellent advice long after it was any use.

I’m not rich enough to do anything I want to do. But I know what you mean; I’m rich enough to avoid doing the things I don’t want to do.

It was only a matter of time. The urge to reform the male is something no woman can resist.

He had the wide toothy smile of the Oriental.

There is no sadness to compare with the grief of the young.

Sex is like crime. Only one per cent motivation and ninety-nine per cent opportunity.

There’ll be no trouble, Angel,’ I said, giving him the sort of wide smile that I’d seen on carefree men with easy minds.

Yes,’ I said. ‘There are trustworthy people in this world, but you have to take such unacceptable risks to find out who they are.

You can find everything you want there and a lot of things you’ve been trying to avoid.

What chance did I stand between the Communists on one side and the Establishment on the other

He trades on emotions, not facts.

Trent’s a Balliol man, like me,’ said Dicky suddenly. ‘Are you boasting, confessing or complaining?’ I asked.

Ich bin ein Berliner,’ I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.

Ruth Rendell, Jonathon Kellerman, Len Deighton . . . clever writers, all of them. No romance, or supernatural, or street-level cop novels here. Psychological mysteries. Suspense. Kellerman was even himself a psychologist. Quinn figured the readers of such books got their enjoyment out of trying to outwit the writers. Would Ida or her late husband be the sort to write critical Amazon

Keith Park was a popular and persuasive man. He had quelled a near mutiny in 1918 by assembling the airmen and talking to them on random subjects and in such a monotonous voice for so long that all rebelliousness was destroyed by fatigue.

Berlin. 25 June 1940. I have the impression that we are rushing for a common currency for the whole of Europe. That would be progress, of course, and, one would hope, of lasting significance. Letter from Helmuth von Moltke (military intelligence)1

Berlin is a sort of history book of twentieth-century violence, and every street corner brought a recollection of something I’d heard, seen, or read. We followed the road alongside the Landwehr Canal, which twists and turns through the heart of the city. Its oily water holds many dark secrets.

Poor fellow, he needed handmade shoes because of his ‘awkward feet’ and Savile Row suits because he wasn’t lucky enough to have the figure for ready-made ones. Cheap wine played havoc with his stomach so he drank expensive ones, and because he couldn’t fit into economy-size airline seats he was forced to go everywhere first class.

She said, ‘I’ll make tea; I’d like a cup myself.’ She was very close to me, standing in front of the mirror. She glanced at her reflection as she straightened her hair and smoothed her rumpled nightdress. It was thin, almost transparent, and the light was shining through it. ‘Come here, duchess,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel like tea just yet.

To give my characters a real, or at least a convincing, life demanded more space. Did giving them a domestic dimension mean pressing the pause button in order to relate the dull routines of mortgages, electric bills, children’s ailments and traffic jams? No, that is not the way to treat your readers unless you just don’t care about them; and in that case you should be writing literary novels.

you’ll have to ask Fiona.’ ‘Did you get the information by some other means? I’m determined to press this point, Giles. You may as well come clean.’ ‘Because your pal Werner Volkmann did it? And you’d like to clear him?’ ‘How did Werner get into Operations that night? He’s never worked in Operations. He’s always been a street man.’ ‘Werner Volkmann wasn’t up there. He was Signals Security One. He brought it from Signals to Ciphers

The established German Army no longer had the physical power to overcome the uniformed private armies of Left and Right. This weakness was not due to a lack of rifles, machine guns, or artillery, or even to a lack of men, but to a shortage of trucks. The vital role of the truck had already been recognized by some military experts. In England Captain B. H. Liddell Hart greeted the six-wheel truck as a landmark in military evolution.

And that’s all you would have got under the American or British system of first-past-the-post,’ said Lottie. ‘It was proportional representation that inflated your gains.

Just as with the collapse of Communism in Poland, Germany's intellectuals and academics who had energetically supported the repressive regime to the very end were the first to declare themselves the victors in a struggle for freedom and democracy. And because substantial numbers of these people spoke English, the news reporters and historians who flooded in to tell the story of freedom's triumph gave them the role of heroes. The story of the role of the Church, its valour, sacrifice and triumphs, was belittled by these belligerent secularists.

Doesn’t he know that all the world’s governments tell lies all day every day, and show no sign of contrition even when they are caught out in such untruths?

Parker had acquired the North American habit of making his demands sound like polite inquiries.

What do the British care about Churchill’s reputation; they have history books full of such men. Democracy is the fabric from which their society is woven.

Rich young troublemakers. The western world is full of such people.

bought New Statesman,

then burned the typewritten sheets and the photos, and lit a cigarette.

only small

The notion of implicit communication also has deep roots in Zen, another of Boyd’s primary influences. Thomas Cleary, in his The Japanese Art of War (which may have been Boyd’s all time favorite book, next to Sun Tzu itself) emphasizes the importance Zen places on mind-to-mind communication. As Cleary notes, this has nothing to do with telepathy or other mystical nonsense but clearly means the transmission of Zen through objective experience, that is, through actions in the real world, which is how Boyd and the maneuver warfare theorists build mutual trust and unit cohesion.63 It is true that the Germans did not always apply these principles well, and sometimes forgot them entirely. Len Deighton even claims that there was only one true Blitzkrieg, the May 1940 attack on France.64 Defense analyst and Boyd acolyte Pierre M. Sprey,65 who translated and assisted in several of Boyd’s interviews with the German generals, estimated that the climate was only fully implemented by maybe one-half of one percent of the army—the small circle around Heinz Guderian that Sprey calls “brilliant rebels.” In this sense, the Israeli Army of 1956 and 1967 was superior, man for man, to the German Army of 1940.66

Bushmills

Companies are run by computers. Profit margins are sliced thin. And no manager dare raise his eyes from his accounts long enough to learn the names of his staff. It’s the price we pay for progress.

she still had that fundamental insecurity that one bout of poverty can inflict for a lifetime, and no amount of money remedy.

He liked clichés. They were, he said, the best way to get simple ideas into the heads of idiots.

This region of England has the prettiest villages and most beautiful countryside in the world, and yet there is something about such contrived perfection that I find disquieting. For the cramped labourers’ cottages are occupied by stockbrokers and building speculators, and ye host in ye olde village pub turns out to be an airline pilot between trips. The real villagers live near the main road in ugly brick terraced houses, their front gardens full of broken motorcars.

Peter was like that: he had the capacity for cruelty that comes so easily to the self-righteous.

They say the mustard manufacturers get rich from the dabs of mustard people leave on their plates. And we’ll get rich in the same way, darling. From selling the soldiers weapons they’ll never use.

But after a little while I got used to the tedium, understanding that these parts of my work were as essential to the arabesques of the final pattern as the rest bars are to a symphony.

But an Oxbridge education can make graduates feel that they are members of some privileged élite, destined to lead and make decisions that will be inflicted upon lesser beings. Such élitism must of necessity be based upon expectations that are often unfulfilled. Thus Oxbridge has not only provided Britain with its most notable politicians and civil servants but its most embittered traitors too.

It was tempting to give it just a trace of water but he resisted the temptation – better that it was forced to adjust to its new environment. Too much care and attention could ruin it – it was a characteristic that cacti shared with agents in the field.

There’s nothing a man can do if you buy something you want and say “Happy birthday” when he first sees it.

Yes, of course. A matter of principle, was it? I’ve always said that matters of principle are the very last things that should provoke a man to seeking recourse in the law courts. The same might well be said of the recourse to violence.

blow

But I saw no sign of Fiona shedding the chrysalis of Communism.

She was only a child and I suppose such corny little manifestations of endearment were what she thought appropriate to her role as a femme fatale.

Like all such London dinner parties it ended rather early and we were home and undressing for bed before midnight. We didn’t read.

Breslow!' Stein's voice was so loud that it made the thin hardboard walls of the dressing room rattle as they echoed back the sound of it. 'Breslow!' It was more like a cry for help than a threat. 'Breslow!' shouted Stein again. He was beginning to realize that Max Breslow controlled a thousand Führers.

being always prepared for an engagement with the Italian fleet. It was an almost impossible undertaking. The Balkan campaigns Having crossed the Adriatic Sea and occupied Albania, Mussolini looked greedily at its neighbour Greece. The Greek dictator General Ioannis Metaxas was a Fascist and pro-Axis in sentiment. Mussolini thought the Greek population, if not

So it wasn’t tourists or encyclopaedia salesmen he was worried about.

Dicky Cruyer ran a finger along the waist of his white denim jeans until he felt the designer’s leather label on his back pocket.

There was an open bottle of champagne in the ice bucket, and already the level was down as far as the label. ‘Are we celebrating something?’ I asked as I took off my coat and hung it in the hall. ‘Don’t be so bloody bourgeois,’ said Tessa, handing me a champagne flute filled right to the brim. That was one of the problems of marrying into wealth; there were no luxuries.