Quotes from Graham Greene

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.

Switzerland is only bearable covered with snow, Aunt Augusta said, like some people are only bearable under a sheet.

He was filled with horror at the thought of what a child becomes, and what the dead must feel watching the change from innocence to guilt and powerless to stop it

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Regret your own actions, if you like that kind of wallowing in self-pity, but never, never despise. Never presume yours is a better morality.

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.

Old age saves us from the realization of a great many fears.

You cannot control what you love—you watch it driving recklessly towards the broken bridge, the torn-up track, the horror of seventy years ahead.

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.

I was afraid like a virgin of the act. I would have liked death to come with due warning, so that I could prepare myself. For what? I didn't know, nor how, except by taking a look around at the little I would be leaving.

What is cowardice in the young is wisdom in the old, but all the same one can be ashamed of wisdom.

I had come into this affair with my eyes open, knowing that one day this must end, and yet, when the sense of insecurity, the logical belief in the hopeless future descended like melancholia, I would badger her and badger her, as though I wanted to bring the future in now at the door, an unwanted and premature guest.

Oh, and there was pride, of course. It takes a long time before we cease to feel proud of being wanted.

I'm just a bad writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls

A picture postcard is a symptom of loneliness.

We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness. It's as if we were working together on the same statue, cutting it out of each other's misery. But I don't even know the design.

I couldn't resist the temptation to tease Pyle - it is, after all, the weapon of weakness and I was weak.

My second wife - I was still young then - she left me, and I made the mistake of winning her back. It took me years to lose her again after that. She was a good woman. It is not easy to lose a good woman. If one must marry it is better to marry a bad woman.

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.

But if I start believing that, then I have to believe in your God. I'd have to love your God. I'd rather love the men you slept with.

There's nothing discreditable about jealousy, Mr Bendrix. I always salute it as the mark of true love.

They deserved nothing less than the truth--a vacant universe and a cooling world, the right to be happy in any way they chose.

The Mayor about the fable of the Prodigal Son: 'But he came home.' 'Yes, his courage failed him. He felt very alone on that pig farm. There was no branch of the Party to which he could look for help. Das Kapital had not yet been written, so he was unable to situate himself in the class struggle. Is it any wonder that he wavered for a time, poor boy?

You'd taken my disbelief into Your love, keeping them to show me later, so that we could both laugh.