From the "Quiet American"
"...and I loved her for the innocence of her questions...She might lie from politeness, from fear, even for profit, but she would never have the cunning to keep her lie concealed..."
"I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused..."
"God save us all, from the innocent and the good..."
" The father at my side said in explanation, ‘We are all neutral here. This is God’s territory.’ I thought. It’s a strange poor population God has in his kingdom, frightened, cold, starving….’ But then I thought, It’s always the same wherever one goes - it’s not the most powerful rulers who have the happiest population…’ "
" ‘It’s strange what fear does to man. It would never do that to me. If I believed in any God at all, I should still hate the idea of confession. Kneeling in one of your boxes. Exposing myself to another man. You must excuse me, Father, but to me it seems morbid – unmanly even,’ "
---- Dedicated to Sandeep Nair
" A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him. "
" The job of a reporter is to expose and record."
" Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night ? "
" A rubber planter beats his laborer – all right, I’m against him. He hasn’t been instructed to do it by the Minister of the Colonies. In France I expect he’d beat his wife. I’ve seen a priest, so poor he hasn’t a change of trousers, working fifteen hours a day from hut to hut in a cholera epidemic, eating nothing but rice and salt fish, saying his Mass with an old cup – a wooden platter. I don’t believe in God and yet I’m for that priest. Why don’t you call that colonialism ? "
" One starts promiscuous and ends like one’s grandfather, faithful to one woman."
"She told me she missed me, which of course was what I wanted to hear…"
"My pen stuck on that word, and then, like an ant meeting an obstacle, went around it by another route."
" You shouldn’t trust anyone when there’s a woman in the case.."
" Love’s a Western word, we use it for sentimental reasons or to cover up an obsession with one woman. These people don’t suffer from obsessions. You’re going to be hurt, Pyle, if you aren’t careful."
