Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene

‘You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.’

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

The cruel come and go like cities and thrones and powers, leaving their ruins behind them. They had no permanence.

And how is Uncle Edward? or is he dead? I’ve reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.’

How long it takes to realize in one’s life the intricate patterns of which everything—even a picture-postcard—can form a part, and the rashness of dismissing anything as unimportant.

There is not one patient whom I know for certain that I saved, but the man I killed—I know him.

‘It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.’