Quotes from Graham Greene

When there was a choice between love of a woman and hate of a man, her mind could cherish only one emotion, for her love might be a subject for laughter, but no one ever had ever mocked her hatred.

He had been frightened and so he had been vehement.

Ten years ago he would have followed her, but middle-age is the period of sad caution.

Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition.

Sometimes I would walk with a sense of pain, sometimes with pleasure. If a woman is in one's thoughts all day, one should not have to dream of her at night.

how twisted we humans are, and yet they say a god made us; but I find it hard to conceive of any god wo is not as simple as a perfect equation, as clear as the air.

Knowledge was the great thing--not abstract knowledge in which Dr. Forester had been so rich, the theories which lead one enticingly on with their appearance of nobility, of transcendent virtue, but detailed, passionate, trivial human knowledge.

The dead of an army become automatically heroes like the dead of the Church become Martyrs.

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her.

I had been afraid of the primitive, had wanted it broken gently, but here it came on us in a breath, as we stumbled up through the dung and the cramped and stinking huts to our lampless sleeping place among the rats. It was the worst one need fear, and it was bearable because it was inescapable.

I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.

She was proud of her power of prophecy, though she had not yet lived to see any of her prophecies fulfilled.

They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.

And how is Uncle Edward? or is he dead? I've reached the time of life when relatives die unnoticed.

I thought of Phuong just because of her complete absence. So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

A ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system.

disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible;

There I go again. I want. I don't want. If I could love You, I could love Henry. God was made man. He was Henry with his astigmatism, Richard with his spots, not only Maurice. If I could love a leper's sores, couldn't I love the boringness of Henry? But I'd turn from the leper if he were here, I suppose, as I shut myself away from Henry. I want the dramatic always. I imagine I'm ready for the pain of your nails... Dear God, I'm no use. I'm still the same bitch and fake. Clear me out of the way.

You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can't steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn't Christian, self-sacrifice isn't Christian, charity isn't, remorse isn't. I expect the cavemen wept to see another's tears.

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

When you feel unable to change your bar you have become old.

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.

What they had both thought was safety proved to have been the camouflage of an enemy who works in terms of friendship, trust and pity.

Rooms don't change, ornaments stand where you place them: only the heart decays.