Our Man in Havana

by Graham Greene

You don’t do crosswords, do you, Mr Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end.

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.’

In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust.

You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

You are invincibly ignorant.’

I’ve reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.’

He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.

You can’t love and be as confident as he was. If you love you are afraid of losing it, aren’t you?’

I hate war, Mr Wormold.’

He had the ill-humoured face of a man who is always in the right.

Sometimes it seems easier to run the risk of death than ridicule.

They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people.

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.

Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?’

A romantic is usually afraid, isn’t he, in case reality doesn’t come up to expectations.