Quotes from Graham Greene

There was something about a fête which drew Arthur Rowe irresistibly

La había escuchado con asombro y con cierta inquietud. Por primera vez advertía los peligros que me acechaban. Me sentí como arrastrado tras ella hacia una absurda empresa de caballeros andantes como Sancho Panza tras Don Quijote, sólo que en busca de lo que ella llamaba diversión, en vez de hidalguía.

I am now in my twenty-second year and yet the only birthday which I can clearly distinguish among all the rest is my twelfth, for it was on that damp and misty day in September I met the Captain for the first time.

I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that.

Mr Rennit was angry because he had not been given time to set his scene, and he could so obviously not afford his anger. There was a kind of starved nobility in the self-sacrifice of his rage.

I have always liked fat men. They have given up all unnecessary effort, for they have had the sense to realize that women do not, as men do, fall in love with physical beauty. It's easier to feel at home with a fat man.

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.

Think how complicated life would be if I had kept in touch with all the men I have known intimately. Some died, some I left, a few have left me. If they were all with me now we would have to take over a whole wing of the Royal Albion. I

Christ had died for this man too: how could he pretend with his pride and lust and cowardice to be any more worthy of that death than the half-caste

The first day one watches to see whether a routine will emerge: it is a routine that makes home.

I didn't lover her, and she certainly didn't love me, but perhaps in a way we could have made a life together.

Too many books by too many authors can be confusing, like too many shirts and suits.

Time gives poetry to a battlefield

it is almost as though someone in those vast spaces is trying to communicate a message of good will, for even the names of the stars are friendly. Venus is any woman we love, the Bears are the bears of childhood

Why don't you go back to your wife, then? ' ' It's not easy to live with someone you've injured.

A veces pienso que nuestra vida está hecha más por los libros que leemos que por la gente que conocemos: en los libros aprendemos, de segunda mano, qué es el amor y el dolor. Aun cuando tenemos la suerte de enamorarnos es porque nos hemos dejado influir por lo que hemos leído. Si yo no había llegado a conocer el amor, era porque en la biblioteca de mi padre faltaban los libros adecuados.

I had no memory at all of Sarah and I was completely free from anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, hate: my mind was a blank sheet on which somebody had just been on the point of writing a message of happiness. I felt sure that when my memory came back, the writing would continue and that I should be happy.

Innocence always calls mutely or protection when we would be so much wise to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

She loved him whatever that meant but love was not an eternal

He was as incapable of imagining pain or danger to himself as he was incapable of conceiving the pain he caused others.

She had a lot to learn, in the way of books and music and how to dress and talk, but she would never have to learn humanity.

Quizá el sentido de la moral es la triste compensación que aprendemos a valorar como premio por la buena conducta.

Ante mí desfilaban imágenes de praderas que se extendían hasta el agua, de viejos castillos sobre colinas surcadas de viñedos y chicas en bicicleta. Todo parecía limpio, ordenado, seguro, como había sido mi propia vida antes del funeral de mi madre. Recordé mi jardín. Echaba de menos mis dalias.

This is European duplicity, Pyle. We have to make up for our lack of supplies.