Graham Greene Quotes

Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.

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, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

I recognized my work for what it was-as unimportant a drug as cigarettes to get one through the weeks and years. If we are extinguished by death, as I still try to believe, what point is there in leaving some books behind any more than bottles, clothes, or cheap jewellry?

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

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

It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.

I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?

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.

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Ο θάνατος είναι πάντα από μόνος του μια απόδειξη ειλικρίνειας.

Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?

What are we doing to each other? Because I know that I am doing to him exactly what he is doing to me. We are sometimes so happy, and never in our lives have we known more unhappiness.

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.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance.

She couldn't avoid being serious about things she cared for, and happiness made her grave at the thought of all the things which might destroy it.

She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.

He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing was ever lost by delay. He had a dim idea that perhaps if one delayed long enough, things were taken out of one's hands altogether by death.

We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.