The quiet American

You can say that if a man is wounded in this fighting, not seriously wounded, just wounded, he knows that he is probably a dead man

We had no God-given right to information. We didn’t have to fight Left-Wing deputies in Paris as well as the troops of Ho Chi Minh between the Red and the Black Rivers. We were not dying

Is the colonel seriously telling us,’ Granger said, ‘that he’s had time to count the enemy dead and not his own?’

Patiently the colonel wove his web of evasion, which he

All one could do was try to make the future less hard, to break the future gently when it came, and even opium had its value there

Was he the only one that mattered? I wondered angrily, and yet I knew that he didn’t intend it that way. To him the whole affair would be happier as soon as he didn’t feel mean—I would be happier, Phuong would be happier, the whole world would be happier, even the Economic Attaché and the Minister. Spring had come to Indo-China now that Pyle was mean no longer

Pyle got away from Phat Diem the morning he arrived: he had fulfilled his mission—to speak to me about Phuong, and there was nothing to keep him

Perhaps that’s why men have invented God—a being capable of understanding

Suddenly I couldn’t bear his boyishness any more. I said, ‘I don’t care that for her interests. You can have her interests. I only want her body. I want her in bed with me. I’d rather ruin her and sleep with her than, than … look after her damned interests.’

He said, ‘Oh,’ in a weak voice, in the dark

‘And did you understand her either? Could you have anticipated this situation? Phuong so happily asleep beside me and you dead

You are crazy.’

‘Oh no. The only real danger was running aground.’

‘Or being shot up by a naval patrol, or a French plane. Or having your throat cut by the Vietminh.’

He laughed shyly. ‘Well, I’m here anyway,’ he said.

‘Why?’