Our Man in Havana

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. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

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. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there.

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.

It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

They haven't left us much to believe in, have they?--even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home or vaguer than a human being.

As long as nothing happens anything is possible...

You should dream more. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

It was a city to visit, not a city to live in, but it was the city where Wormold had first fallen in love and he was held to it as though to the scene of a disaster. Time gives poetry to a battlefield.

They had the comfort of not learning from experience.

You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

You are interested in a person, not in life, and people die or leave us ... But if you are interested in life it never lets you down. I am interested in the blueness of cheese. You don't do crosswords, do you, Mr. Wormold? I do, and they are like people: one reaches an end. I can finish any crossword within an hour, but I have a discovery concerning the blueness of cheese that will never come to a conclusion.

A romantic is usually afraid in case reality doesn't come up to expectations.

And how is Uncle Edward? or is he dead? I've reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.

A picture postcard is a symptom of loneliness.

Time gives poetry to a battlefield...

When you feel unable to change your bar you have become old.

There are times, aren't there, when Shakespeare is a little dull.

The act of lust and the act of love are the same; it cannot be falsified like a sentiment.

I said what do you mean by his country? A flag someone invented two hundred years ago? The Bench of Bishops arguing about divorce and the House of Commons shouting Ya at each other across the floor? Or do you mean the T.U.C. and British Railways and the Co-op?

Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

He felt the sad relief of a man who realizes that there is one love at least that no longer hurts him.

He sat heavily down on a tall tubular adjustable chair, which shortened suddenly under his weight and split him on the floor. Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of a tragedy.

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. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

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. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like the pain of an amputated leg no longer there.

He had no accomplice except the credulity of other men.

You can be certain of what you’ve done, you can judge death, but to save a man – that takes more than six years of training, and in the end you can never be quite sure that it was you who saved him.

You should dream more, Mr Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.’ 2

You kill a man – that is so easy,’ Dr Hasselbacher said, ‘it needs no skill. You can be certain of what you’ve done, you can judge death, but to save a man – that takes more than six years of training, and in the end you can never be quite sure that it was you who saved him. Germs are killed by other germs. People just survive.