Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene

‘But it’s terrible, isn’t it. I have to marry for keeps.’ ‘Most of us think we are going to do that—when we do it.’

There hadn’t, he realized, been any need to break a death gently, so far as Milly was concerned. All deaths to her were happy deaths. Vengeance was unnecessary when you believed in a heaven But he had no such belief. Mercy and forgiveness were scarcely virtues in a Christian; they came too easily.

‘To Milly. I don’t care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations. … I don’t think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?’

‘Not all of it. They haven’t left us much to believe, have they?—even disbelief. I can’t believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.’