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274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1969
…and in any case I have a weakness for funerals. People are generally seen at their best on these occasions, serious and sober, and optimistic on the subject of personal immortality.
Too many books by too many authors can be confusing, like too many shirts and suits. I like to change my clothes as little as possible. I suppose some people would say the same of my ideas, but the bank had taught me to be wary of whims. Whims so often end in bankruptcy.
I remembered how at Brighton she had told me that her idea of fame was to be represented at Tussaud’s, dressed in one of her own costumes, and I really believe she would have opted for the Chamber of Horrors rather than have had no image made of her at all.
It was as though I had escaped from an open prison, had been snatched away, provided with a rope ladder and a waiting car, into my aunt’s world, the world of the unexpected character and the unforeseen event.
"God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world!"
"Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition."
One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand."
I think the reason lay partly in his idea of immortality, but I think too it belonged to his war against the Inland Revenue. He was a great believer in delaying tactics. "Never answer all their questions," he would say. "Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it's easier for them to give in."The way that Greene plants the Pottifer story in the novel gives it a unique significance. Check it out when you read the book: I don't want to give the author's secret away. I have too much respect for him.