Quotes from Graham Greene

Querry and Doctor Colin sat on the steps of the hospital in the cool of the early day. Every pillar had its shadow and every shadow its crouching patient.

I'm sick with life, I'm rotten with health.

Father Quixote thought: How many times I have felt guilty as he does without knowing why. Sometimes he envied the certitude of those who were able to lay down clear rules--Father Heribert Jone, his bishop, even the Pope. Himself, he lived in a mist, unable to see a path, stumbling.

la simple y humilde diferencia entre lo apropiado y lo inapropiado en un momento concreto.

Henry was important, but important rather as an elephant is important, from the size of his department; there are some kinds of importance that remain hopelessly damned to unseriousness.

Curious pedantries moved him.

She was too beautiful to excite me with the idea of accessibility.

atento a los latidos de su corazón «como si intentaran transmitirle un mensaje, un aviso, en un código que no podía entender».

I suppose it was only one more indication of a human being's capacity for self-deception, our baseless optimism that is so much more appalling than our despair.

A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

The Communists …' He was impregnably armoured by his good intentions and his ignorance.

face a little smudged with tears. She asked, 'Was it

en Orient, on ne gronde pas les enfants.

He saw her fixed in her life like a fly in amber—Maria's hand raised to strike: Pedro talking prematurely in the dusk: and the police beating the forest—violence everywhere. He prayed silently, 'O God, give me any kind of death—without contrition, in a state of sin—only save this child.

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.

have never planned anything illegal in my life,' Aunt Augusta said. 'How could I plan anything of the kind when I have never read any of the laws and have no idea what they are?

If a woman is in one's thoughts all day, one should not have to dream of her at night.

O ódio parece mexer com as mesmas glândulas que o amor: produz até as mesmas ações. Se não nos tivessem ensinado a interpretar a história da Paixão, será que seríamos capazes de dizer, julgando apenas pelas ações, se foi o ciumento Judas ou o covarde Pedro quem amou a Cristo?

Decía ver las escenas que contaba como a través del ojo móvil de una cámara. Y la cámara seguía a los personajes, captaba rasgos y detalles significativos, iluminados o en penumbra, en primer plano o como figuras al fondo de la escena, entre la luz, el claroscuro y lo negro.

in a flash of insight he became aware of the innumerable necessary evils of which life for her was made up.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever.

Beware of formulas. If there's a God, he's not a God of formulas.

She had so much more capacity for love than I had - I couldn't bring down that curtain round the moment, I couldn't forget and I couldn't not fear. Even in the moment of love, I was like a police officer gathering evidence of a crime that hadn't yet been committed [...]

A whistle blew, and the train trembled into movement. The station lamps sailed by them into darkness