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Book: The Little Drummer Girl
Quotes of Book: The Little Drummer Girl
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  1. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    Those who are treated as pariahs become pariahs-just as, to quote Auden, those to whom evil is done do evil in return.
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  2. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    and marvelled at the self-regarding irrelevance of the ruling English mind.
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  3. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    The defended softness, that's what I look for in the gals.
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  4. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    She hardly cared. They wanted her. They knew her through and through; they knew her fragility and her plurality. And they still wanted her. They had stolen her in order to rescue her. After all her drifting, their straight line. After all her guilt and concealment, their acceptance. After all her words, their action, their abstemiousness, their clear-eyed zeal, their authenticity, their true allegiance, to fill the emptiness that had yawned and screamed inside her like a bored demon ever since she could remember.
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  5. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    It was the most monotonous day of my life," he replied without a second's hesitation. Then his rigid face broke and re-formed itself into the best smile ever, so that for a moment he really did look as if he had slipped through the bars of whatever confined him. "As a matter of fact, I thought you quite excellent," he said. This time she did not object to his choice of adjective. "Will you crash the car now, please, Jose? This will do me fine. I'll die here." And before he could stop her, she had grabbed his hand and kissed him hard on the knuckle of his thumb."
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  6. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    A terrorist for Karen is someone who has a bomb but no aeroplane.Ch. 4
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  7. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    Dash it all, she's an actress! Don't take her so seriously. Actors don't have opinions, my dear chap, still less do actresses. They have moods. Fads. Poses. Twenty-four-hour passions. There's a lot wrong with the world, dammit. Actors are absolute suckers for dramatic solutions. For all I know, by the time you get her out there, she'll be Born Again!
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  8. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    What did theories matter any more? She wanted to say. The rats have taken over the ship, it's often as simple as that; the rest is narcissistic crap. It must be. {...} For exploitation read property and you have the whole bit. First the exploiter hits the wage-slave over the head with his superior wealth; then he brainwashes him into believing that the pursuit of property is a valid motive for breaking him at the grindstone. That way he has him hooked twice over. {...} "You disappoint me, Charlie. All of a sudden you lack consistency. You've made the perceptions. Why don't you go out and do something about them? Why do you appear here one minute as an intellectual who has the eye and brain to see what is not visible to the deluded masses, the next you have not the courage to go out and perform a small service - like theft - like murder - like blowing something up - say, a police station - for the benefit of those whose hearts and minds are enslaved by the capitalist overlords? Come on, Charlie, where's the action? You're the free soul around here. Don't give us the words, give us the deeds." {...} Anger suspended her bewilderment and dulled the pain of her disgrace {...} She wished terribly that she could go mad so that everyone would be sorry for her; she wished she was just a raving lunatic waiting to be let off, not a stupid little fool of a radical actress {...} {part I, chapter 7}
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  9. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    Western teaching institutions that refuse to acknowledge today's taboos are by definition subversive. Tell the new zealots of Washington that in the making of Israel a monstrous human crime was committed and they will call you an anti-Semite. Tell them there was no Garden of Creation and they will call you a dangerous cynic. Tell them God is what man invented to compensate for his ignorance of science and they will call you a Communist.
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  10. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    Demos are mock battles, never the real thing. Everybody knows where they're going to happen, and when and why. Nobody gets seriously hurt. Well, not unless they ask for it. {ch. 4}
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  11. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    The greatest crime is to do nothing because we can only do a little {...} I feel nothing, because feeling is subversive and contrary to military discipline. Therefore I do not feel, but I fight and therefore I exist. {part I, chapter 10}"
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  12. John le Carré _ The Little Drummer Girl

    The Armorys of this world don't steal. They serve their country right or wrong. Or they do until the day when they come face to face with real life and their warped rectitude deserts them and their faces unlock and become real, puzzled faces like everybody else's. So there's another god for you that's passed its sell-by date: enlightened patriotism, until this afternoon Nick Armory's religion. {ch. 14}
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