The Quiet American

by Graham Greene

young and unused face flung at us like a dart. With his gangly legs and his crew-cut and his wide campus gaze he seemed incapable of harm.

You cannot love without intuition.

She had attached herself to youth and hope and seriousness and now they had failed her more than age and despair.

Pyle said solemnly, ‘A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.’ It sounded like a Caodaist maxim. I began to feel the air of Tanyin was too ethical for me to breathe.

What possible future had he got that was worth a piastre?

There was nothing I wanted there, except to get away for a moment from that silence sitting in a chair.