Reading, December 25, 2006 11:11 PM 0 comments
The Constant Gardener by John le Carré
A review in tabs—excerpts I found noteworthy in this fictional account of the pharmaceutical industry's plundering and ethics in Africa and a British diplomat trying to solve the mystery of his wife's murder because of her involvement in exposing it.
Page 403
We reach an age when our childhoods are no longer an excuse.
Page 446
They did this to me but I have remained who I am. I am tempered. I am able. Inside myself there's an untouched man. If they came back now, and did everything to me again, they would never reach the untouched man. I've passed the exam I've been shirking all my life. I'm a graduate of pain.
Page 453 on Ghita taking her civil service entrance exam
And somehow the very decision to sit the exam, though unsuccessful, released the reasoning behind it, which was that she was more at ease with herself joining the System than staying apart from it and achieving little beyond the partial gratification of her artistic impulses.
Page 454
Better to be inside the System and fighting it than outside the System, howling at it.
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.—George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
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