Death was far more certain than God, and with death there could no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift.

Graham Greene

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董橋一、兩年前的散文總是提到毛姆，誇讚他文筆好故事好，自己也早已讀熟了，現在仍喜歡閒來再讀。我中五初時借過厚得厲害的Of Human Bondage，果然好文筆，可惜宗教部分我多不明所以，讀不下去就還了，一如我會考後企圖讀完亞瑟王之死的原版般，以半途放棄為終。

始終不敢不讀毛姆，一次在旺角舊書店我搜出一本企鵝1967年的毛姆短篇故事選之二，買了讀了很是喜歡他的文筆和故事，亦一直奇怪為什麼我會深為之吸引﹖其魔力何在﹖最近董橋也多了談及Greene，我上個月的一個假日偷懶去了Jennifer的書閣，找到Greene的小說The Quiet American，是漂亮的橙色企鵝，1962年出版，價錢合理，讀來也很喜歡。Greene與毛姆一樣都是講故事能手。

憶起海明威的文筆和故事，心想要是他能夠講得一口流利的故事，老年必不愁文思枯竭﹗

下為The Quiet American的一些佳句：

‘…I had better look after Pyle.’ That was my first instinct – to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was greater need to project myself. Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we could 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.

Death was far more certain than God, and with death there could no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift.

An advantage of this war was that a European face proved in itself a passport on the field: a European could not be suspected of being an enemy agent.

They were like the missing letters on a Roman tomb and I the archaeologist filling in the gaps according to the bias of my scholarship.