“‘It wouldn’t be fair to her, Thomas,’ he said quite seriously. I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused. He added, “I don’t think you quite understand Phuong.’

And, waking that morning months later with Phuong beside me, I thought, And did you understand her either? Could you have anticipated this situation? Phuong so happily asleep beside me and you dead? Time has its revenges, but revenges seem so often sour. Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God—a being capable of understanding.”

—from The Quiet American by Graham Greene