Aveen’s Reviews > The Quiet American > Status Update

"he'll always be innocent, you can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity."

"In the moment of shock there is little pain; pain began about three A.M., when I began to plan the life I had still somehow to live and to remember memories in order somehow to eliminate them. Happy memories are the worst, and I tired to remember the unhappy. I was practised. I had lived all this before. I knew I could do what was necessary, but I was so much older—I felt I had little energy left to reconstruct."

"They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
"If Indo-China goes ..."
"I know the record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean?"

"To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity."