Quotes from Graham Greene

All good novelists have bad memories.

If ash-trays could speak, sir.' 'Indeed, yes.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days.

I can't talk you in terms of time --your time and my time are different

The Church is in the world, it is part of the suffering in the world, and though Christ condemned the disciple who struck off the ear of the high priest's servant, our hearts go out in sympathy to all who are moved to violence by the suffering of others. The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism.

They killed him because he was too innocent to live. He was young and ignorant and silly and he got involved. He had no more of a notion than any of you what the whole affair's about . . .

What are others worth that they have the nerve to sneer at any human being?

Doubt is the heart of the matter. Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith, but absolute, heartless conviction. You're certain that you possess the Truth -- inevitably offered with an implied uppercase T -- and this certainty quickly devolves into dogmatism and righteousness, by which I mean a demonstrative, overweening pride in being so very right, in short, the arrogance of fundamentalism.

Can you explain away love too?' I asked. 'Oh yes,' he said. 'The desire to possess in some, like avarice: in others the desire to surrender, to lose the sense of responsibility, the wish to be admired. Sometimes just the wish to be able to talk, to unburden yourself to someone who won't be bored. The desire to find again a father or a mother. And of course under it all the biological motive.

For a moment I had felt elation as on the instant of waking before one remembers.

The more bare a life is, the more we fear change.

She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.