Graham Greene Quotes - Page 11

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• Sometimes I get so tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realise that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Tired, I Love Him

  "The end of the affair".

  5 Copy quote

• I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.

  Graham Greene

  Thinking, Think Of You, I Can

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

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• It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?

  Graham Greene

  Hate, Men, Years

  Graham Greene (1960). “The Heart of The Matter”

  4 Copy quote

• People change,' she said 'Oh, no they don't. Look at me. I've never changed. It's like those sticks of rock: bite it all the way down, you'll still read Brighton. That's human nature.

  Graham Greene

  Rocks, People, Looks

  Graham Greene (1947). “Brighton rock”

  4 Copy quote

• Cynicism is cheap - you can buy it at any Monoprix store - it's built into all poor-quality goods.

  Graham Greene

  Quality Goods, Poor Quality, Cynicism

  GRAHAM GREENE (1966). “THE COMEDIANS”

  8 Copy quote

• Like the characters in Chekhov, they have no reserves -– you learn the most intimate secrets. You get an impression of a world peopled by eccentrics, of odd professions, almost incredible stupidities, and, to balance them, amazing endurances.

  Graham Greene

  Character, Stupidity, Secret

  Graham Greene (1982). “Another Mexico”, Viking Adult

  5 Copy quote

• Those who marry God can become domesticated too - it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word Love means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and Ave Maria like dearest is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves - it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

  Graham Greene

  Love, Mean, Night

  Graham Greene (2010). “A Burnt Out Case”, p.6, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days--and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. 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. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt.

  Graham Greene

  Lying, Pride, Cutting

  Graham Greene (1971). “The Power and the Glory”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  4 Copy quote

• Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politick. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.

  Graham Greene

  Blood, Hands, Water

  The Comedians pt. 3, ch. 4 (1966)

  7 Copy quote

• Yesterday I went home with him and we did the usual things. I haven't the nerve to put them down, but I'd like to, because now when I'm writing it's already tomorrow and I'm afraid of getting to the end of yesterday. As long as I go on writing, yesterday is today and we are still together

  Graham Greene

  Home, Writing, Yesterday

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

  5 Copy quote

• American bankers believe in the personal touch; the teller conveys a sense that he happens to be there accidentally and he is overjoyed at the lucky chance of the encounter.

  Graham Greene

  Believe, Bankers, Encounters

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

  4 Copy quote

• It infuriated him to think that there were still people in the state who believed in a loving and merciful God. There are mystics who are said to have experienced God directly. He was a mystic, too, and what he had experienced was vacancy--a complete certainty in the existence of a dying, cooling world, of human beings who had evolved from animals for no purpose at all.

  Graham Greene

  Animal, Thinking, People

  Graham Greene (1982). “The power and the glory”, Viking Pr

  4 Copy quote

• Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.

  Graham Greene

  Fun, Men, Brain

  Graham Greene (1970). “The Collected Edition: Brighton rock”

  4 Copy quote

• I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.

  Graham Greene

  School, Eye, Men

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

  5 Copy quote

• Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb; the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.

  Graham Greene

  Love, Rain, Men

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Portable Graham Greene”

  5 Copy quote

• If I stopped loving Him, I would cease to believe in His love. If I loved God, then I would believe in His love for me. It's not enough to need it. We have to love first, and I don't know how. But I need it, how I need it.

  Graham Greene

  Believe, Needs, His Love

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

  4 Copy quote

• For God's sake stop making people in your image. Harry was real. He wasn't just your hero and my lover. He was Harry. He was in a racket. He did bad things. What about it? He was the man we knew.

  Graham Greene

  Love, Real, Hero

  Graham Greene (1971). “Triple pursuit: a Graham Greene omnibus”, Viking Pr

  4 Copy quote

• One gets started, and then, suddenly, one cannot remember what toothpaste they use . . . the moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

  Graham Greene

  Character, Doe, Use

  4 Copy quote

• I couldn't help wondering, is my husband so unattractive that no woman has ever wanted him? Except me, of course. I must have wanted him, in a way, once, but I've forgotten why, and I was too young to know what I was choosing.

  Graham Greene

  Husband, Unattractive, Way

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

  4 Copy quote

• Its typical of Mexico, of the whole human race perhaps — violence in favour of an ideal and then the ideal lost but the violence just going on.

  Graham Greene

  Race, Violence, Favour

  Graham Greene (1982). “Another Mexico”, Viking Adult

  5 Copy quote

• Melodrama is one of my working tools and it enables me to obtain effects that would be unobtainable otherwise; on the other hand I am not deliberately melodramatic; don't get too annoyed if I say that I write in the way that I do because I am what I am.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Hands, Annoyed

  Graham Greene, Henry J. Donaghy (1992). “Conversations with Graham Greene”, p.44, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

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