Charles McCarry > Quotes

“(F)iction is...what ought to have been, not what actually was. At least, not exactly.”
― Charles McCarry

“All suburban housing developments look alike, and besides, every Yankee who ever crossed the Potomac except Ulysses S. Grant got lost as soon as he reached the Virginia side.”
― Charles McCarry, The Shanghai Factor

“...and I was reminded....of the everday boredom of a life in espionage. One is always waiting for someone who does not show up,for something that does not happen.”
― Charles McCarry, Old Boys

“Suddenly, in the here and now, everything depended on the houbara bustard.”
― Charles McCarry, Old Boys

“the truth was that I had become a secret agent because I could not bear for another minute the pointlessness of life in the real world.”
― Charles McCarry, The Shanghai Factor

“No wonder the summer solstice had been such a fun day in northern Europe before Christian missionaries arrived from the sunny south. If priests had not driven sex underground, what would the north have been like? Would art have flourished in the absence of sexual repression? What about artillery and fortification? The Reformation? The Thirty Years War? The French Revolution? The final perfection of murder as blood sport at Verdun and Dresden and in the Gulag?

In short, where would we be without Jesus?”
― Charles McCarry, Old Boys

“What exactly was the role of the U.S. government in the coup that overthrew Ngo Dinh Diem?” Trumbull stared for a moment at Foley’s rigid back. Then he said to Patchen, “Tell him.” “I think you already know, Paul,” Patchen said. “In simple terms, we countenanced it. We knew it was being planned. We offered advice. We provided support. We encouraged the plot. We welcomed the results.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“Idealists make brave agents, but they are bad intelligence officers. They cannot exist for long without the company of like minds; they have a need to speak their beliefs and to hear their beliefs spoken.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“So, what is it you want to know in return for your silence, and this lesson on philosophy?” “Three things,” Christopher said. “First, is Lê Thu the code name of the operation that was carried out on November 22 in Dallas? Second, how was the message transmitted from Saigon to the North, and then to the man who recruited the American assassin? Third, what is the name of your relative in the intelligence service of North Vietnam who recruited the man who, in turn, activated Oswald?”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“Yes, the geomantic factors. You understand the principle of geomancy, of course—one orients oneself to the natural world on the basis of harmony with the five natural elements, which are fire, water, metal, wood, and earth. None of these three men seems to have been in harmony with the world. In Vietnamese terms, they were all under the influence of the Ma Than Vong.” “Which is?” “A very colorful and malevolent force—the tightening-knot ghost. Ma Than Vong goads men to suicide, or into situations where their violent death is inevitable.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“Do you think they killed Oswald?” “No,” Christopher said. “If I’m right about how they handled him, it would have been wasteful. He didn’t know who they were. They must have told him they’d get him out after the shooting, set him up as a hero under a fake identity. He would have believed that.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“same mistake. Love the woman you marry, be crazy to fuck her all night, every night until death does you part,”
― Charles McCarry, The Mulberry Bush

“Do said you Cubans had the best service in the world, because your revolution is still young enough to feel hunger and rage.” Ruiz nodded, accepting the compliment. “Do told me that story, too,” he said. Christopher went on speaking, as if prolonging the joke. “It was Benshikov who suggested a professional rifleman for Dallas, you know. Do wouldn’t tell him the details, just that he wanted an assassin.” Ruiz read the label on the empty vodka bottle. “Truthfully, at the time, I thought they had chosen the wrong man—not you, the assassin,” Christopher said.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“At eight o'clock the street filled up with Italians, as though the town had been turned upside down like a sack and its people spilled into the morning.”
― Charles McCarry, The Tears of Autumn

“Christopher, leaving his tea untouched, faced the two old men. He supposed they might be sixty, but it was impossible to tell with Asians; one year they were fresh with youth, and the next their skulls came through their flesh as if their corpses were eager to escape into the grave.”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn: A Paul Christopher Novel

“But the Viet Cong did horrible things,” she said. “The people who shot you down could have been the ones who massacred children, raped women, disemboweled village elders, couldn’t they? Such things happened in Vietnam.” “How do you know that? From more Republican books?” “Don’t condescend to me, Julian. You know it’s true. ” Julian said, “I’m not sure I do know that. But if such things were done by the V.C., there was always a political rationale. Always.” His features were once again in repose. “There was a ‘political rationale’?” Emily said. “That explains everything?” Julian had no chance to answer before the radio emitted some incomprehensible message from air traffic control that required him to respond. But for Julian, Emily realized, it did explain everything.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Bülow drew danger to himself by the excessive use of technique; he behaved like a spy because he enjoyed the trappings of conspiracy. He had been making the same furtive mistakes for such a long time that he believed they had preserved his life. No one else doubted that sooner or later they would kill him.”
― Charles McCarry, The Secret Lovers

“Mallory flashed the thin, quick humorless smile Blackstone had seen so often on television.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Yes,” Christopher said. “ ‘He who loves the world as his body may be entrusted with the empire”
― Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn

“I said, "The fact that he seems to be a born liar doesn't bother you?"
"Lies are the truth of the Left," Peter said, flicking my question off the table like a crumb. "The revolution has always lied about everything for it's own reasons.”
― Charles McCarry

“Peter's contempt for those Americans who loved us was breathtaking, but that is the revolutionary's way. All that mattered to him was the outcome.”
― Charles McCarry, Lucky Bastard

“Eight years before, after a tumultuous election campaign, Mallory had defeated an inept and unpopular but liberal President by tactics that people like the dean regarded as kicking a man when he was down: he had pointedly ignored an appalling personal scandal that swirled round the incumbent and dwelled caustically on the man’s virtually unbroken string of disastrous policy mistakes. After one term, Mallory himself was defeated by Lockwood, and when he ran against Lockwood a second time, two months ago, he lost by the smallest margin of popular votes in history. After that, though he continued to loiter in the nightmares of those who deplored him, his image had vanished from the news media, reducing him overnight from the enormous dimensions of world repute to his original puny size and being, as if fame itself were a floppy disk that could be inserted into the collective consciousness or removed from it according to the whim of some Olympian computer operators.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“All but a few of those messages of concern to the Senate and much of the commentary in the news media had come from people who held radical beliefs with evangelical passion and would spring ferociously to their defense at the slightest sign that they were being questioned. Hammett knew their minds: Correctness was virtue; belief was personal validity; doctrine was truth. All else was evil.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“The plot is interesting. There is an artistry to what we are doing: spies are like novelists - except that spies use living people and real places to make their world of art. More and more I want to see what I can do with these characters I've been given.”
― Charles McCarry, The Miernik Dossier

“When Lockwood gripped Mallory’s hand, the latter pressed a note into his callused palm. It was folded into a wad.

“Read that,” Mallory said. “I’ll wait for your call.” He turned on his heel and walked into the nave.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“you’d better get rid of the idea that either one of us, or anyone else in this day and age, can appeal to the general interest, to patriotism or common sense, and achieve a result that’s in the best interests of the country.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“This did not mean that he had not been active in his own cause. On the contrary, he had been on the telephone all night, every night, feeding his advocates facts and phrases, suggesting sources of support and information, organizing telephone and mail campaigns, and above all guiding and nurturing journalists by reminding them, by tone of voice and vocabulary—though never in so many words—that he was the enemy of their enemies.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“As of ten minutes ago, when he was sworn in by Albert Tyler in the President’s Room with the leadership of both houses of Congress as witnesses, that’s what he is.” Busby was staggered by the audacity of this maneuver by the Old Guard. “But how could something like this happen just like that, with no warning, out of the blue?” “Because we have a Constitution which delivers us from evil,”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“Eight years before, after a tumultuous election campaign, Mallory had defeated an inept and unpopular but liberal President by tactics that people like the dean regarded as kicking a man when he was down: he had pointedly ignored an appalling personal scandal that swirled round the incumbent and dwelled caustically on the man’s virtually unbroken string of disastrous policy mistakes.”
― Charles McCarry, Shelley's Heart

“We’re paid to be dirty so that the virtuous may be immaculate,”
― Charles McCarry, The Shanghai Factor