Graham Greene Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in...We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.

  Graham Greene

  Lying, Doors, Childhood

  18 Copy quote

• It is a great danger for everyone when what is shocking changes.

  Graham Greene

  Danger, Shocking

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

  8 Copy quote

• I aim to be content with what I produce. It's an aim I never achieve, but I go over my work word by word, time and again, so as to be as little dissatisfied as possible.

  Graham Greene

  Writing, Littles, Achieve

  Graham Greene, Marie-Françoise Allain (1991). “Conversations with Graham Greene”

  5 Copy quote

• It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

  Graham Greene

  Lying, Understanding, Tasks

  Graham Greene, Marie-Françoise Allain (1991). “Conversations with Graham Greene”

  11 Copy quote

• Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

  Graham Greene

  Reality, Literature, Century

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

  8 Copy quote

• Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

  Graham Greene

  Heart, Two, Cold

  Graham Greene (1948). “The Heart of the Matter”

  26 Copy quote

• With a novel, which takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man he was at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. It is not only that his characters have developed-he has developed with them, and this nearly always gives a sense of roughness to the work: a novel can seldom have the sense of perfection which you find in Chekhov's story, The Lady with the Dog.

  Graham Greene

  Dog, Book, Writing

  Graham Greene (1973). “Collected Stories”

  12 Copy quote

• Never presume yours is a better morality.

  Graham Greene

  Morality

  Graham Greene (1996). “Travels with My Aunt”, p.39, Oberon Books

  7 Copy quote

• ...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

  Graham Greene

  Monologues, Discussion, Sooner Or Later

  Graham Greene (1951). “The heart of the matter”

  23 Copy quote

• The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.

  Graham Greene

  Talking, Next, Best Things

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

  7 Copy quote

• Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.

  Graham Greene

  Relationship, Discovery, Tears

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

  11 Copy quote

• Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.

  Graham Greene

  Numbers, Suffering, World

  Graham Greene (1992). “The Quiet American”

  6 Copy quote

• It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

  Graham Greene

  Relationship, Trust, Faith

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

  8 Copy quote

• You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.

  Graham Greene

  Hate, Hands, Forgive Me

  23 Copy quote

• One forgets so quickly one's own youth.

  Graham Greene

  Youth, Forget

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

  5 Copy quote

• She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn't be spoken aloud when you are happy.

  Graham Greene

  Wise, Being Wise, Young

  Graham Greene (1976). “The third man: Loser takes all”, Random House (UK)

  5 Copy quote

• If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?

  Graham Greene

  Alternatives, Literature, Mask

  Graham Greene (1966). “The Comedians”

  13 Copy quote

• The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

  Graham Greene

  Plot, Fiction, Remember

  8 Copy quote

• Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.

  Graham Greene

  Prayer, Men, Class

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

  6 Copy quote

• As the end of the what is called the 'sexual life' the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

  Graham Greene

  Disappointment, Betrayal, Simple

  Graham Greene (2010). “May We Borrow Your Husband?”, p.25, Random House

  15 Copy quote

• Sometimes I see myself reflected too closely in other men for comfort, and then I have an enormous wish to believe in the saints, in heroic virtue.

  Graham Greene

  Believe, Men, Wish

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

  17 Copy quote

• I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.

  Graham Greene

  Love You, Dark, Light

  25 Copy quote

• Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.

  Graham Greene

  Eternity, Absence, Said

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

  14 Copy quote

• It is the earliest dream that I can remember, earlier than the witch at the corner of the nursery passage, this dream of something outside that has got to come in. The witch, like the masked dancers, has form, but this is simply power, a force exerted on a door, an influence that drifted after me upstairs and pressed against windows.

  Graham Greene

  Dream, Doors, Nurse

  Graham Greene (1978). “Journey without maps”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

  Graham Greene

  Moving Forward, Writing, Shopping

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

  13 Copy quote

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