Quotes from Graham Greene

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.

It felt odd and poetic and encouraging coming back after so many years, a shape imposing itself on life again after chaos.

She dabbed at her eyes. 'You'd be bored, Henry. An unfinished bottle of champagne found in an old cupboard with all the sparkle gone …' The jaded phrase was worthy of a Haymarket author.

Maybe I'm growing up, Thomas'. But there were tears in his voice, and he looked younger than he had ever done.

Human nature too has curious twisted reasons that the heart certainly knows nothing of. It eased the conscience of many small men to feel that they were working for

Hatred is in my brain, not in my stomach or my skin. It can't be removed like a rash or an ache. Didn't I hate you as well as love you? And don't I hate myself?

The passenger wondered when it was that he had first begun to detest laughter like a bad smell.

Only in childhood do books have any deep influence on our lives. In later life, we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in our minds already.

to an author there is a certain romance when stray copies of his work turn up in far, poor or abandoned places of the world.

There are small bits of useless knowledge which stick to one's brain like barnacles to

I drive through the streets and I care not a damn, The people they stare, and they ask who I am; And if I should chance to run over a cad, I can pay for the damage if ever so bad. So pleasant it is to have money, heigh ho! So pleasant it is to have money.

Africa will always be the Africa of the Victorian atlas, the blank unexplored continent the shape of the human heart.