Simple,
Childlike
Orientals

[Alden Pyle is the "quiet American" in Graham Greene's novel of the same name. He knows and likes Thomas Fowler, an English journalist in Saigon. The last time the meet, they have this dialogue about the Vietnamese.]

Pyle: "You talk like an European, Thomas. These people aren't complicated."

Fowler: "Is that what you've learned in a few months? You'll be calling them childlike next."

Pyle: "Well --- in a way."

Fowler: "Find me an uncomplicated child, Pyle. When we are young we are a jungle of complications. We simplify as we get older."

--- As quoted in
The London Review of Books
14 November 2002