Graham Greene Quotes

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One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn't wonder about the dead-what is he doing now, who is he with?
Graham Greene Quotes: One forgets the dead quite
For a good man fame is always a problem.
Graham Greene Quotes: For a good man fame
Fun ... human nature ... does no one any harm ... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain
nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.
Graham Greene Quotes: Fun ... human nature ...
All right. All right.' He thought: am I taking to drink too? It seemed to him that he had no shape left, nothing you could touch and say: this is Scobie.
Graham Greene Quotes: All right. All right.' He
Oh, it's not done,' I said, 'but neither is adultery or theft or running away from the enemy's fire. The not done things are done every day, Henry. It's part of modern life. I've done most of them myself.
Graham Greene Quotes: Oh, it's not done,' I
Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.
Graham Greene Quotes: Men have prayed in prison,
He began to realize what the criminal class knows so well, the impossibility of explaining anything to a man with power.
Graham Greene Quotes: He began to realize what
I refused to believe that love could take any other form than mine: I measured love by the extent of my jealousy, and by that standard of course she could not love me at all.
Graham Greene Quotes: I refused to believe that
Do you like dogs?'
'No.'
'I thought the British were great dog-lovers.'
'We think Americans love dollars, but there must be exceptions.
Graham Greene Quotes: Do you like dogs?'<br>'No.'<br>'I thought
A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.
Graham Greene Quotes: A single feat of daring
In the vision there is no morality
Graham Greene Quotes: In the vision there is
I ought to write funny books. Life is really too horribly funny, but unless one`s an outsider looking on, it`s all such a bore.
Graham Greene Quotes: I ought to write funny
That was the difference, he had always known, between his faith and theirs, the political leaders of the people who cared only for things like the state, the republic: this child was more important than a whole continent.
Graham Greene Quotes: That was the difference, he
Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.
Graham Greene Quotes: Rocinante was of more value
Pyle could see pain when it was in front of his eyes. (I don't write that as a sneer; there are so many of us who can't)
Graham Greene Quotes: Pyle could see pain when
I'm just a bad writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls
Graham Greene Quotes: I'm just a bad writer
The influence of early books is profound. So much of the future lies on the shelves. Early reading has more influence than any religious teaching.
Graham Greene Quotes: The influence of early books
What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days
and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins
impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity
cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt.
Graham Greene Quotes: What an unbearable creature he
You were there teaching me to squander, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for Pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace-he needs it more.
Graham Greene Quotes: You were there teaching me
No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another's happiness.
Graham Greene Quotes: No human being can really
I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.
Graham Greene Quotes: I had very good dentures
I felt for the first time the premonitory of loneliness.It was all fantastic, and yet, and yet ... He might be a poor lover, but I was a poor man. He had in his hand the infinite riches of respectability
Graham Greene Quotes: I felt for the first
For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience – the rest is observation
Graham Greene Quotes: For writers it is always
I had committed myself: without love I'd have to go through the gestures of love.
Graham Greene Quotes: I had committed myself: without
There are times, aren't there, when Shakespeare is a little dull.
Graham Greene Quotes: There are times, aren't there,
What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?
Graham Greene Quotes: What happens if you drop
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honour - the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
Graham Greene Quotes: To be in love is
Perhaps all life was like that
dull and then a heroic flurry at the end.
Graham Greene Quotes: Perhaps all life was like
Fear is easily experienced, but fun is hard to come by in old age, so I already felt a sense of gratitude to General Omar Torrijos.
Graham Greene Quotes: Fear is easily experienced, but
The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation.
Graham Greene Quotes: The hurt is in the
Sometimes it's easier to cut your coat to fit the cloth than lie on the bed you've made.
Graham Greene Quotes: Sometimes it's easier to cut
You should dream more, Mr. Wormold. Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
Graham Greene Quotes: You should dream more, Mr.
Perhaps the sexual life is the great test. If we can survive it with charity to those we love and with affection to those we have betrayed, we needn't worry so much about the good and the bad in us. But jealousy, distrust, cruelty, revenge, recrimination ... then we fail. The wrong is in that failure even if we are the victims and not the executioners. Virtue is no excuse.
Graham Greene Quotes: Perhaps the sexual life is
The words of human love have been used by the saints to describe their vision of God, and so I suppose we might use the terms of prayer, meditation, contemplation to explain the intensity of the love we feel for a woman ...
Graham Greene Quotes: The words of human love
One's life is more formed, I sometimes think, by books than by human beings: it is out of books one learns about love and pain at second hand. Even if we have the happy chance to fall in love, it is because we have been conditioned by what we have read, and if I had never known love at all, perhaps it was because my father's library had not contained the right books.
Graham Greene Quotes: One's life is more formed,
Oh, and there was pride, of course. It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted.
Graham Greene Quotes: Oh, and there was pride,
There are times when a lover longs to be also a father and a brother: he is jealous of the years he hasn't shared.
Graham Greene Quotes: There are times when a
A man becomes trustworthy when you trust him.
Graham Greene Quotes: A man becomes trustworthy when
I can't talk you in terms of time
your time and my time are different
Graham Greene Quotes: I can't talk you in
You do not always say goodbye to those you love beside a deathbed, in an atmosphere of leisure and incense.
Graham Greene Quotes: You do not always say
There was not much one could do; he decided at least to be good.
Graham Greene Quotes: There was not much one
Cruel men cry easily at the cinema.
Graham Greene Quotes: Cruel men cry easily at
A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.
Graham Greene Quotes: A movie is not a
In her view when a thing was done, it was done: remorse died with the act.
Graham Greene Quotes: In her view when a
All, Pyle? Wait until you're afraid of living ten years alone with no companion and a nursing home at the end of it. THen you'll start running in any direction, even away from that girl in the red dressing-gown, to find someone, anyone, who last until you are through.
Graham Greene Quotes: All, Pyle? Wait until you're
You don't bless what you love ... It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway ... We have to bless what we hate ... It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.
Graham Greene Quotes: You don't bless what you
Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.
Graham Greene Quotes: Nobody thinks in terms of
Neither of us mentioned him when we woke on the morning after his death...One is not jealous of the dead, and it seemed easy to me that morning to take up our old life together.
Graham Greene Quotes: Neither of us mentioned him
A police photograph is like a passport photograph: the intelligence which casts a veil over the crude common shape is never recorded by the cheap lens. No one can deny the contours of the flesh, the shape of nose and mouth, and yet we protest, This isn't me.
Graham Greene Quotes: A police photograph is like
I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good - in this case postponement in attending to my hurt - for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself.
Graham Greene Quotes: I know myself, and I
She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.
Graham Greene Quotes: She mixes religion with desertion
The old man in the beard he felt convinced was wrong. He was too busy saving his own soul. Wasn't it better to take part even in the crimes of people you loved, if it was necessary hate as they did, and if that were the end of everything suffer damnation with them rather than be saved alone?
Graham Greene Quotes: The old man in the
As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas
Graham Greene Quotes: As long as there is
It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
Graham Greene Quotes: It's a strange thing to
One always spoke of her like that in the third person as though she were not there. Sometimes she seemed invisible like peace.
Graham Greene Quotes: One always spoke of her
What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?
Graham Greene Quotes: What do we ever get
As they pedalled us down the long suburban road to the Chinese town a line of French armoured cars went by, each with its jutting gun and silent officer motionless like a figurehead under the stars and the black, smooth, concave sky––trouble again probably with a private army, the Binh Xuyen, who ran the Grand Monde and the gambling halls of Cholon. This was a land of rebellious barons. It was like Europe in the Middle Ages. But what were the Americans doing here? Columbus had not yet discovered their country.
Graham Greene Quotes: As they pedalled us down
It isn't. when you come to think of it a quite respectable trade, the detection of the innocent, for aren't lovers nearly always innocent? They have committed no crime, they are certain in their own minds that they have done no wrong, 'as long as no one but myself is hurt', the old tag is ready on their lips, and love, of course, excuses everything
so they believe and so I used to believe in the days when I loved.
Graham Greene Quotes: It isn't. when you come
The first dog I ever had was called Prince. I called him after the Black Prince. You know, the fellow who ... '
'Massacred all the women and children in Limoges.'
'I don't remember that.'
'The history books gloss it over.
Graham Greene Quotes: The first dog I ever
I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations ... I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
Graham Greene Quotes: I don't care a damn
Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears.
Graham Greene Quotes: Old age saves us from
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.
Graham Greene Quotes: I had to touch you
There's only things, Blackie.
Graham Greene Quotes: There's only things, Blackie.
You have a sense of humour. I am in favor of jokes. They have political value. Jokes are a release for the cowardly and the impotent.
Graham Greene Quotes: You have a sense of
Hate is an automatic response to fear, for fear humiliates.
Graham Greene Quotes: Hate is an automatic response
But she wouldn't pray, she took what comfort and credit she could for not praying; it wasn't that one disbelieved in prayer; one never lost all one's belief in magic. It was that she preferred to plan, it was fairer, it wasn't loading the dice.
Graham Greene Quotes: But she wouldn't pray, she
The Lord is my shepherd. But if we are sheep why in heaven's name should we trust our shepherd? He's going to guard us from the wolves all right, oh yes, but only so that he can sell us later to the butcher.
Graham Greene Quotes: The Lord is my shepherd.
Perhaps we were looking strained in our manner, because I noticed we had attracted the attention of a little man who sat on a sofa not far off. I tried to outstare him and that was easy. He had a long moustache and fawn-like eyes and he looked hurriedly away: his elbow caught his glass of beer and spun it on to the floor, so that he was overcome with confusion. I was sorry then because it occurred to me that he might have recognized me from my photographs: he might even be one of my few readers. He had a small boy sitting with him, and what a cruel thing it is to humiliate a father in the presence of his son. The boy blushed scarlet when the waiter hurried forward, and his father began to apologize with unnecessary vehemence.
Graham Greene Quotes: Perhaps we were looking strained
Disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible;
Graham Greene Quotes: Disappointment had to be postponed,
I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.
Graham Greene Quotes: I am interested in the
I loved a man,"she said. "I told you - a man doesn't alter because you find out more about him. He's still the same man.
Graham Greene Quotes: I loved a man,
Oh, I'm not a Berkeleian. I believe my back's against this wall. I believe there's a sten gun over there.
Graham Greene Quotes: Oh, I'm not a Berkeleian.
I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.
Graham Greene Quotes: I thought I am kissing
One can't always be wise, can one, in a world like this?
Graham Greene Quotes: One can't always be wise,
It's easier to get over a thing" Scobie said, "if you talk about it
Graham Greene Quotes: It's easier to get over
So one always starts a journey in a strange land
taking too many precautions, until one tires of the exertion and abandons care in the worst spot of all.
Graham Greene Quotes: So one always starts a
One can go back to one's own home after a year's absence and immediately the door closes it is as if one had never been away. Or one can go back after a few hours and everything is so changed that one is a stranger.
Graham Greene Quotes: One can go back to
Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
Graham Greene Quotes: Christmas it seems to me
Even though my reason wanted the state of death, I was afraid like a virgin of the act.
Graham Greene Quotes: Even though my reason wanted
I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines.
Graham Greene Quotes: I was a correspondent: I
And then beginning to go back to what you can't even remember.
Graham Greene Quotes: And then beginning to go
Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb; the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.
Graham Greene Quotes: Men can become twins with
I was afraid of burglars and Indian thugs and snakes and fires and Jack the Ripper, when I should have been afraid of thirty years in a bank and a take-over bid and a premature retirement and the Deuil du Roy Albert.
Graham Greene Quotes: I was afraid of burglars
Switzerland is only bearable covered with snow," Aunt Augusta said, "like some people are only bearable under a sheet.
Graham Greene Quotes: Switzerland is only bearable covered
You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
Graham Greene Quotes: You cannot conceive, nor can
He had opened the book at random several times, seeking a sortes Virgilianae, before he chose the sentences on which his code was to be based. 'You say: I am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let it fall.' It was as if in choosing that passage, he were transmitting a signal of defiance to both the services. The last word of the message, when it was decoded by Boris or another, would read 'goodbye.
Graham Greene Quotes: He had opened the book
He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.
Graham Greene Quotes: He gave her a bright
In my school, he thought, they learn bitterness and frustration and how to grow old.
Graham Greene Quotes: In my school, he thought,
Rooms don't change, ornaments stand where you place them: only the heart decays.
Graham Greene Quotes: Rooms don't change, ornaments stand
Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.
Graham Greene Quotes: Sometimes I get tired of
Then his friend said, 'If you fly you will save a day.'
He nodded, he agreed, he would sacrifice his ticket, he would save a day.
I ask you what does a day saved matter to him or to you? A day saved from what? for what? Instead of spending the day traveling, you will see your friend a day earlier, but you cannot stay indefinitely, you will travel home twenty-four hours sooner, that is all. But you will fly home and again save a day? Save it form what, for what? You will begin work a day earlier, but you cannot work on indefinitely. It only means that you will cease work a day earlier. And then, what? You cannot die a day earlier. So you will realize perhaps how rash it was of you to save a day, when you discover how you cannot escape those twenty-four hours you have so carefully preserved; you may push them forward and push them forward, but some time they must be spend, and then you may wish you had spent them as innocently as in the train from Ostend.
Graham Greene Quotes: Then his friend said, 'If
American bankers believe in the personal touch; the teller conveys a sense that he happens to be there accidentally and he is overjoyed at the lucky chance of the encounter.
Graham Greene Quotes: American bankers believe in the
The thought of retirement set his nerves twitching and straining: he always prayed that death would come first.
Graham Greene Quotes: The thought of retirement set
When I tried to remember her voice saying, 'Don't worry,' I found I had no memory for sounds. I couldn't imitate her voice. I couldn't even caricature it: when I tried to remember it, it was anonymous - just any woman's voice.
The process of forgetting her had set in. We should keep gramophone records as we keep photographs.
Graham Greene Quotes: When I tried to remember
Destruction after all is a form of creation.
Graham Greene Quotes: Destruction after all is a
Was the secret of lasting youth known only to the criminal mind?
Graham Greene Quotes: Was the secret of lasting
For an artist to think in terms of success is like a priest trying to think in terms of success.
Graham Greene Quotes: For an artist to think
Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises, as complicated as the alignments at Waterloo, thought out on a brass bedstead among the crumbs of sausage roll. [p107]
Graham Greene Quotes: Life was a series of
I like to have a secret love affair, a hidden life, something to lie about.
Graham Greene Quotes: I like to have a
As long as one suffers one lives.
Graham Greene Quotes: As long as one suffers
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