Graham Greene

The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.

Share

He’s a good chap in his way. Serious. Not one of those noisy bastards at the Continental. A quiet American.

Share

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 the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

Share

No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.

Share

A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.

Share

He could distinguish the approach of Milly like that of a police car from a long way off. Whistles instead of sirens warned him of her coming.

Share

Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven’t even got a self to express.

Share

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.

Share

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

Share

They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.

Share

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

Share

For a good man fame is always a problem.

Share

Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncan’s death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth?

Share

Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

Share

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

Share

It’s a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible.

Share

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.

Share

No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.

Share

There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.

Share

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

Share

People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.

Share

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

Share

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 name?

Share

Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.

Share

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

Share

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. Or perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of the duck unserved.

Share

A family library is a breeding-place for character.

Share

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

Share

HERESY IS ONLY ANOTHER WORD FOR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

Share

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

Share

Innocence always calls mutely for protection, when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world meaning no harm.

Share

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Share

In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Share

What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

Share

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.

Share

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.

Share