Top 60 Len Deighton Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Len Deighton

2. “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Well socialism is exactly the reverse.”

— Len Deighton

3. “The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change.”

— Len Deighton

4. “When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war.”

— Len Deighton

5. “In Mexico an air conditioner is called a politician because it makes a lot of noise but doesn’t work very well.”

— Len Deighton

6. “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.”

— Len Deighton

7. “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.”

— Len Deighton

8. “Progress is man’s indifference to the lessons of history.”

— Len Deighton

9. “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.”

— Len Deighton

10. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

12. “Whatever path you take, there is a league of bad road.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

14. “The factory workers say that it’s impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early you are a saboteur; if you arrive five minutes late you are betraying socialism; if you arrive on time they say, Where did you get the watch?”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

16. “I hurt, therefore I am.”

— Len Deighton

17. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

19. “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.”

— Len Deighton

20. “I think the reason working-class people don’t write books is because they are encouraged to believe that only certain people are permitted to write books.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

22. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

26. “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.”

— Len Deighton

27. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

29. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

32. “Or was the truth – like so many truths – not any one of the envisaged possibilities?”

— Len Deighton

33. “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.”

— Len Deighton

34. “He trades on emotions, not facts.”

— Len Deighton

35. “I store away my experiences and don’t feel really happy until I’ve found a way to write about them.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

37. “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.”

— Len Deighton

38. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

40. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

44. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton

47. “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.”

— Len Deighton

48. “Writers are frequently asked why they wrote their first book. A more interesting answer might come from asking them why they wrote their second one.”

— Len Deighton

49. “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.”

— Len Deighton

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

— Len Deighton