Quotes from book
The Quiet American

Name: The Quiet American
Author: Graham Greene

The Quiet American is a 1955 novel by English author Graham Greene.

“Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. I, ch. 3, sect. 3
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

“Suffering is not increased by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“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.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. III, ch. 2, pg 216
The Quiet American (1955)

“So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“Sooner or later…one has to take sides – if one is to remain human.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 230
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

“You cannot love without intuition.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“Innocence is a kind of insanity”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year… death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“God save us always," I said, "from the innocent and the good.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. I, ch. 1, pg 15
Source: The Quiet American (1955)

“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?”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Source: The Quiet American

“The hurt is in the act of possession; we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. II, ch. 3
The Quiet American (1955)

“Oh, I’m not a Berkeleian. I believe my back’s against this wall. I believe there’s a sten gun over there.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. II, ch. 2, pg 123
The Quiet American (1955)

“What right had I to value her less than the bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist, in terms of quantity, and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 242
The Quiet American (1955)

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