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Graham Greene
87 quotes
“Have you seen a room from which faith has gone?...Like a marriage from which love has gone...And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Potting Shed (1957)
“The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1959 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From journal kept while writing A Burnt-Out Case (1959)
“It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1969 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech on receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969)
“Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Sort of Life, ch. 7, sct. 1 (1971)
“My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: International Herald Tribune (7 October 1977)
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times (8 January 1981)
“A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to critic Stephen Pile, The Sunday Times (London, 18 January 1981)
“Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Freedom of Thought," speech accepting the Jerusalem Prize (6 April 1981)
“The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Observer (London, January 2, 1983)
“That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1984 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Getting to know the General (1984)
“A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times (October 9, 1985)
“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 (1904–1991) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The New York Times (October 9, 1985)
“You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On a priest who pantomimes Mass, Monsignor Quixote, PBS TV (February 13, 1987)
“The trouble is I don't believe my unbelief.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (8 July 1987) Reported in Leopoldo Duran, Graham Greene: An intimate portrait by his closest friend and confidant, translated by Euan Cameron. HarperCollins, 1994, p. 97
“Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Independent (London, April 4, 1991)
“There is not so much virginity in the world that one can afford not to love when one finds it.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Re Hale] He only felt his loneliness after his third gin.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Ida] "...It's a good world if you don't weaken.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… it was the little things which tripped you up.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Priest at Hale's cremation] "...our brother is at this moment reabsorbed in the universal spirit.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[After Hale's cremation] She came out of the crematorium, and there from the twin towers above her head fumed the very last of Fred, a thin stream of grey smoke from the ovens. Fred dropped indistinguishable grey ash on the pink blossoms: he became part of the smoke nuisance over London, and Ida wept.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is made by the places in which he lives...”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[About Pinkie's character] The word murder conveyed no more to him than the word 'box', 'collar', 'giraffe'.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[About Pinkie's inability to empathise] The imagination hadn't awoken. That was his strength. He couldn't see through other people's eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Rose, taken out for the evening by Pinkie] She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present – she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...the Boy sat silent. It was he this time who was being warned: life held the vitriol bottle and warned him: I'll spoil your looks.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...he knew there wasn't a soul in the mob he could trust – except perhaps Dallow. That didn't matter. You couldn't make mistakes when you trusted nobody.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises ...”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He knew everything in theory, nothing in practice... He knew the moves, he'd never played the game.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People talk," Ida Arnold said. "People talk all the time.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Cubitt hurling insults at Pinky after he refuses to lend him money] The picture Cubitt drew had got nothing to do with him: it was like the pictures men drew of Christ, the image of their own sentimentality. ...He was like a professor describing to a stranger some place he had only read in books:...when all the time it was a country the stranger knew...”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps his laughter saved them — it must be difficult to shoot a laughing man: you have to feel important to kill.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old lady knelt, saying her 'Hail Mary'; She didn't believe — but among Catholics even the sceptical are courteous.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But the great moment was over — here in Orizaba it was like Galilee between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection — all the enthusiasm had been spent.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose the love of life which periodically deserts most men was returning: like sexual desire, it moves in cycles.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity— that was a quality God's image carried with it.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thrillers are like life—more like life than you are … it’s what we’ve all made of the world.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People don't like reality, they don't like common sense, until age forces it on them.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us — Martins felt the little jab of dispensability.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No danger anywhere, it seemed to Rollo Martins of that sudden reckless moment when the scent of hair or a hand against the side alters life.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do not choose our concerns.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I sat on my bed and I said to God: You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.”
Graham Greene (1904–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source