ERIC AMBLER

International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it

Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.

Reality is always so obstructive.

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

International business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood.

Good' did not triumph. 'Evil' did not triumph. The two resolved, destroyed each other and created new 'evils', new 'goods' which slew each other in their turn.

Yet, when these facts are seen side by side with other facts in the case, it is difficult not to become lost in superstitious awe. Their very absurdity seems to prohibit the use of the words 'chance' and 'coincidence.' For the sceptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman Law, it is administered with sub-human inefficiency.

In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.

Reality is always so obstructive.

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet.

For the skeptic there remains only one consolation: if there should be such a thing as superhuman law it is administered with subhuman inefficiency.

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it