The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

So much of the war is sitting around and doing nothing, waiting for somebody else. With no guarantee of the amount of time you have left it doesn’t seem worth starting even a train of thought.

Perhaps to the soldier the civilian is the man who employs him to kill, who includes the guilt of murder in the pay-envelope and escapes responsibility.

‘I believe what I report, which is more than most of your correspondents do.’

‘They don’t want Communism.’ ‘They want enough rice,’ I said. ‘They don’t want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don’t want our white skins around telling them what they want.’

game of Quatre Cent Vingt-et-un.

The Role of the West. Who is this York Harding?’

there’s no such thing as gratitude in politics.’

‘They were only war casualties,’ he said. ‘It was a pity, but you can’t always hit your target. Anyway they died in the right cause.’ ‘Would you have said the same if it had been your old nurse with her blueberry pie?’ He ignored my facile point. ‘In a way you could say they died for democracy,’ he said.

Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.