Quotes from Graham Greene

Heroism began where politics stopped.

If I could suffer like you, I could heal like you.

Männer, die die Stadt für immer verlassen hatten, erinnerten sich manchmal an einem grauen, naßkalten Abend in London des rosigen Schimmers und der glühenden Pracht, die, kaum gesehen, auch schon wieder verblichen; sie fragten sich dann, warum sie die Küste so gehaßt hatten, und solange sie einen Tropfen im Glase hatten, sehnten sie sich danach, dorthin zurückzukehren.

Discomfort irritates our ego like a mosquito-bite. We become aware of ourselves, the more uncomfortable we are

Failures like ours are often just failures of hope. Please – cannot you say you are sorry you did not have more hope?

Dear Unknown Reader, do not close this Book, but read a little before you sleep. There is Wisdom here. Your Unknown Friend.' I

The more we know the more we love.

My hair is beginning to go. I'll soon be glabrous.

What strange ideas people have about leprosy, doctor.'     'They learn it from the Bible. Like sex.'     'It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible

Don't be too sorry for those who die after some pain. It makes them ready to go. Think of how a death sentence must sound when you are full of health and vigour.

I have fallen in love once, it can be done again.

Are you a happy man?' Querry asked. 'I suppose I am. It's not a question that I've ever asked myself. Does a happy man ever ask it? I go on from day to day.

Marcel, I know I'm an old woman and as you say a bit of an actress. But please go on pretending. As long as we pretend we escape. Pretend that I love you like a mistress. Pretend that you love me like a lover. Pretend that I would die for you and that you would die for me.' I read the message again now; I thought it movingly phrased . . . And he had died for her, so perhaps he was no comédien after all. Death is a proof of sincerity.

I wanted her mind, now I wanted to read her thoughts, but they were hidden away in a language I couldn't speak.

If I had been told I would have laughed, as I laugh now on my better days.

We are possessed by nobody not even by ourselves

Mr Chou cleared his throat, but it was only for an immense expectoration into a tin spittoon decorated with pink blooms. The baby rolled up and down among the tea-dregs and the cat leapt from a cardboard box on to a suitcase.

Disbelief could be a product of hysteria just as much as belief.

Every child was born with some kind of knowledge of love, he thought; they took it with the milk at the breast: but on parents and friends depended the kind of love they knew - the saving one or the damning kind. Lust too was a kind of love.

He said, 'You don't have to make conversation with me.' 'My husband says that I am too silent.' 'Silence is not a bad thing.' 'It is when you are unhappy.

You know, if you live in a place for long you cease to read about it.

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.

When we get to the end of human beings we have to delude ourselves into a belief in God.

When I came up from Brighton by the train': a rich Guinness voice, a voice from a public bar.