'The Quiet American' by Graham Greene.

“Death takes away vanity—even the vanity of the cuckold who mustn’t show his pain.”

“...From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had always longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness... Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would no longer be the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. 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.”

"It is odd how reassuring conversation is, especially on abstract subjects: it seems to normalize the strangest surroundings."

All of those are Thomas Fowler, the narrator of the book. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would, given that it's for 20th Century American Foreign Policy, my hell course this semester. I'm particularly enjoying the contrast between the characters - Fowler's older, experienced, worldly, and hard. Emotionally he's restrained to a crippling point, and he knows it. And then you have his view of the eponymous Alden Pyle, a young innocent man whose idealistic visions and impossible standards haven't yet crumbled. Set in Vietnam in 1955, I think it is, it's very interesting. They're vying for the heart of the same girl, Phuong (whose name means "phoenix"), in very detached ways - the love that all three involved feel is really interesting.

On a completely separate note, I just remembered something I wanted to mention. I've been listening (almost obsessively, really) to a bunch of songs by Chris Ayer and Ingrid Michaelson lately. I love the Ingrid Michaelson ones for their lyrics, but also for how different they are, musically, from a lot of stuff I usually hear. I love Chris Ayer's stuff for his lyrics and his simple, folksy music - really, though, his lyrics are amazing. The guy can write a song. And sing it in a manner where you can understand everything he's saying. AND he can write a good tune that's not about love, which is wonderfully refreshing. To me, at least. But yeah. That's what I wanted to note: a great relatively unknown singer/songwriter who writes touching songs that aren't all about love.

That's all.