Graham Greene Quotes - Page 8

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• Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity.

  Graham Greene

  Rain, Fall, Two

  Graham Greene (1971). “The heart of the matter”, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

  Graham Greene

  Children, Childhood, Forever

  Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Our man in Havana”

  5 Copy quote

• Love taught me that your honour did but jest.

  Graham Greene

  Taught, Jest, Honour

  7 Copy quote

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

  Graham Greene

  Character, Majority, Unconscious

  "Graham Greene, How Do You Do It?" by Francis X. Clines, archive.nytimes.com. October 09, 1985.

  6 Copy quote

• My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.

  Graham Greene

  Passion, Simple, Forever

  6 Copy quote

• He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.

  Graham Greene

  Children, Blood, Contact

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• So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Depends, Superficiality

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.

  Graham Greene

  Pain, Drinking, Tired

  4 Copy quote

• It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.

  Graham Greene

  Sometimes, Scene, Difficult

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The ministry of fear”

  6 Copy quote

• Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood - for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.

  Graham Greene

  Running, Memories, Book

  "The Ministry of Fear". Book by Graham Greene. Book 1, Chapter 7, Section 1, 1943.

  7 Copy quote

• What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment?

  Graham Greene

  Disappointment

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• So much of life [is] a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing [is] ever lost by delay.

  Graham Greene

  Delay, Life Is, Unhappiness

  7 Copy quote

• I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.

  Graham Greene

  Vacancy, Crowded

  Graham Greene (1951). “The End of the Affair”, London Heinemann [1951]

  7 Copy quote

• A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Doe, Precaution

  Graham Greene (1982). “A Burnt-Out Case”, Viking Adult

  5 Copy quote

• They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.

  Graham Greene

  Believe, Home, Bigger

  "Triple pursuit: a Graham Greene omnibus".

  5 Copy quote

• Hatred seems to work on the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

  Graham Greene

  Passion, Jealous, Hatred

  The End of the Affair ch. 3 (1951)

  13 Copy quote

• I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.

  Graham Greene

  Wish, Littles, Might

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

  10 Copy quote

• Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.

  Graham Greene

  Christmas, Regret, Holiday

  Graham Greene (1980). “Travels with my aunt”

  12 Copy quote

• Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.

  Graham Greene

  Art, Ducks, Cooking

  Graham Greene (1994). “In Search of a Character: Two African Journals”, Penguin USA

  8 Copy quote

• When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most. It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself.

  Graham Greene

  Hate, Mistake, Believe

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.

  Graham Greene

  Men, Good Man, Ordinary

  "The Ministry of Fear". Book by Graham Greene. Book 1, Chapter 7, Section 1, 1943.

  6 Copy quote

• Rocinante was of more value for a true traveller than a jet plane. Jet planes were for business men.

  Graham Greene

  Travel, Men, Jet Planes

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• I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Play, People

  Graham Greene, Henry J. Donaghy (1992). “Conversations with Graham Greene”, p.37, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Oh, she doesn't belong to anybody now,' he said, and suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon, so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are all possessed by nobody, not even by ourselves.

  Graham Greene

  Hair, Years, Waiting

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.

  Graham Greene

  Literature, Thrillers

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The ministry of fear”

  12 Copy quote

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