Quotes from Graham Greene

For a matter of seconds, he felt an immense satisfaction that he could talk of suffering to them now without hypocrisy--it is hard for the sleek and well-fed priest to praise poverty.

I am now in my twenty-second year and yet the only birthday which I can clearly distinguish among all the rest is my twelfth, for it was on that damp and misty day in September I met the Captain for the first time.

I love you. I am your father and I love you. Try to understand that.

That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins—impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity—cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all.

Christ had died for this man too: how could he pretend with his pride and lust and cowardice to be any more worthy of that death than the half-caste

Why don't you go back to your wife, then? ' ' It's not easy to live with someone you've injured.

I had no memory at all of Sarah and I was completely free from anxiety, jealousy, insecurity, hate: my mind was a blank sheet on which somebody had just been on the point of writing a message of happiness. I felt sure that when my memory came back, the writing would continue and that I should be happy.

She loved him whatever that meant but love was not an eternal

A book takes me a year to write. It's too hard work for a revenge. -If you knew how little you had to revenge....

words like 'mystery' and 'soul' and 'the source of life' came in over and over again, as they sat on the bed talking, with nothing to do and nothing to believe and nowhere better to go.

The place was very like the world: overcrowded with lust and crime and unhappy love, it stank to heaven; but he realized that after all it was possible to find peace there, when you knew for certain that the time was short.

That hiccup is best cured by drinking out of the opposite rime of a glass. You can imitate a glass with your hand. Liquid is not a necessary part of the cure.