Len Deighton

Leonard Cyril Deighton (18 February 1929 – 15 March 2026) was an English novelist, historian and cookery writer. His many spy thrillers include The IPCRESS File (1962), a a film version was released in 1965.

Quotes

• 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?"
  • Funeral in Berlin (1964; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) pp. 144-5
  • Described there as a joke current in 1960s Czechoslovakia

• Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.
  • Funeral in Berlin (1964; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) p. 145
  • Another Czech joke

• Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history.
  • An Expensive Place to Die, Jonathan Cape (1967) Ch. 39

• 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.
  • London Match (London: Hutchinson, 1985) p. 18

• "...But love is like the measles; the later in life it affects you, the more severe the consequences"
  "Is there anything you can take for it?"
  "Only wedding vows"
  • Charity (1997; Harper Paperback, p. 280)

• "When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war."
  • Eleven Declarations of War (London: Harcourt Brace, 1975) p. 11

External links

• Len Deighton at IMDb