Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
- Our Man in Havana (2004:195)
'I didn't know there were class-distinctions in torture.'
'Dear Mr Wormold, surely you realize there are people who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea. One never tortures except by a kind of mutual agreement. ... Dr Hasselbacher does not belong to the torturable class.'
'Who does?'
'The poor in my own country, in any Latin American country. The poor of Central Europe and the Orient. Of course in your welfare states you have no poor, so you are untorturable ... It is an instinctive matter on both sides. Catholics are more torturable than Protestants, just as they are more criminal ... One reason why the West hates the Communist states is that they don't recognize class-distinctions. Sometimes they torture the wrong people. So too of course did Hitler and shocked the world. No one cares what goes on in our prisons, or the prisons of Lisbon or Caracas, but Hitler was too promiscuous. It was rather as though in your country a chauffeur had slept with a peeress.'
'We're not shocked by that any longer.'
'It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.'
- ibid., 155
'Milly would never have married you, Segura. She doesn't really like cigarette-cases made of human skin.'
'Did you ever hear whose skin?'
'No.'
'A police-officer who tortured my father to death. You see, he was a poor man. He belonged to the torturable class.'
- ibid., 217
she realized the chief problem of their future - that he would never be quite mad enough.
- ibid., 225
