Graham Greene

Graham Greene

"You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God."
60 Quotes
"You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God."
Graham Greene Brighton Rock
"Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space."
Graham Greene
"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 The Ministry of Fear
"But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist."
Graham Greene The End of the Affair
"If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower."
Graham Greene
"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."
Graham Greene The End of the Affair
"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."
Graham Greene Ways of Escape
"A police photograph is like a passport photograph: the intelligence which casts a veil over the crude common shape is never recorded by the cheap lens. No one can deny the contours of the flesh, the shape of nose and mouth, and yet we protest, This isn't me."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"He had been frightened and so he had been vehement."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"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 The Power and the Glory
"A man kept his character even when he was insane."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"We forget very easily what gives us pain."
Graham Greene The Ministry of Fear
"“If only it were possible to love without injury – fidelity isn’t enough: I had been faithful to Anne and yet I had injured her. The hurt is in the act of possession: we are too small in mind and body to possess another person without pride or to be possessed without humiliation. In a way I was glad that my wife had struck out at me again – I had forgotten her pain for too long, and this was the only kind of recompense I could give her. Unfortunately the innocent are always involved in any conflict. Always, everywhere, there is some voice crying from a tower. ”"
Graham Greene
"Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel."
Graham Greene The Comedians
"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in."
Graham Greene
"In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths."
Graham Greene
"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
Graham Greene
"It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself."
Graham Greene
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