Quotes from Graham Greene

Because I couldn't bear the thought of her so much as touching another man, I feared it all the time, and I saw intimacy in the most casual movement of her hand.

If I were writing a novel I would end it here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I'm beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.

Why is it that the hate of man – even of a man like Franco – dies with his death, and yet love, the love which he had begun to feel for Father Quixote, seemed now to live and grow in spite of the final separation and the final silence – for how long, he wondered with a kind of fear, was it possible for that love of his to continue? And to what end?

The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism.

Aren't we all better dead? the opium reasoned within me.

The possession of a body tonight seemed a very small thing—perhaps that day I had seen too many bodies which belonged to no one, not even to themselves. We were all expendable.

It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.

Mr Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few vultures looked down from the

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

Mr Tench went out to look for his ether cylinder, into the blazing Mexican sun and the bleaching dust. A few vultures looked down from the roof with shabby indifference: he wasn't carrion yet.

Men will always have to choose a lesser evil and the lesser evil may mean the state, the prison camp, yes, if you like to say it, the psychiatric hospital.

I got a glimpse of something young, dark and happy and not yet spoiled: an animal that didn't yet recognize her captivity.

The only building finished in Duvalierville is the cock-fight stadium.

He's a superior sort of journalist—they call them diplomatic correspondents. He gets hold of an idea and then alters every situation to fit the idea.

Captain Segura squeezed out a smile. It seemed to come from the wrong place like toothpaste when the tube splits.

But of course if you believed in God—and the Devil—the thing wasn't quite so comic. Because the Devil—and God too—had always used comic people, futile people, little suburban natures and the maimed and warped to serve his purposes. When God used them you talked emptily of Nobility and when the devil used them of Wickedness, but the material was only dull shabby human mediocrity in either case.

I didn't mean that,' Pyle said. 'When you are in love you want to play the game, that's all.' That's true, I thought, but not as he innocently means 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. Perhaps I was no longer in love but I remembered.

Why did you give Querry Deo Gratias?' 'He's cured, but he's a burnt-out case, and I don't want to send him away. He can sweep a floor and make a bed without fingers or toes.' 'Our visitors are sometimes fastidious.' 'I assure you Querry doesn't mind. In fact he asked for him.

I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

246Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of tragedy.

Too many books by too many authors can be confusing

había seguido mis instrucciones al pie de la letra.

How much treachery is always nourished in little overworked centres of somebody else's idealism

Belief dies away like desire for a woman