The Quiet American
Aimer à loisir, Aimer et mourir Au pays qui te ressemble.
Graham Greene • The Quiet American
"Love at leisure,Love and die,In a country that looks like you"
‘The trouble was,’ I said, ‘he got mixed up.’ ‘To speak plainly,’ Vigot said, ‘I am not altogether sorry. He was doing a lot of harm.’ ‘God save us always,’ I said, ‘from the innocent and the good.’ ‘The good?’ ‘Yes, good. In his way. You’re a Roman Catholic. You wouldn’t recognize his way. And anyway, he was a damned Yankee.’
Graham Greene • The Quiet American
This book hinges on this idea of intentions; it's the key to its morality. Every person, to a person, has their own internal judgment playing out in their actions—ambivalence to extremism. It's a beautiful book and this dialog is emblematic of the presentation.
I said, ‘We seem to have talked about pretty nearly everything except God. We’d better leave him to the small hours.’ ‘You don’t believe in Him, do you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Things to me wouldn’t make sense without Him.’ ‘They don’t make sense to me with him.’
Graham Greene • The Quiet American
Smart atheist dialog is always among my favorites.
It was the Economic Attaché. He beamed down at us from the terrace above, a great warm welcoming smile, full of confidence, like the man who keeps his friends because he uses the right deodorants.
Graham Greene • The Quiet American
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.
Graham Greene • The Quiet American
I’m not so stupid. One doesn’t take one’s enemy’s book as a souvenir. There it is on your shelf. The Role of the West. Who is this York Harding?’ ‘He’s the man you are looking for, Vigot. He killed Pyle—at long range.’ ‘I don’t understand.’ ‘He’s a superior sort of journalist—they call them diplomatic correspondents. He gets hold of an idea and the
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Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God—a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bamboozle myself into belief
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Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possib
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You say that we’ve always tried to tell the truth to each other, but, Thomas, your truth is always so temporary. What’s the good of arguing with you, or trying to make you see reason?