Quotes from Graham Greene

I wondered whether she would consent to sleep with me that night if Pyle never came, but I knew that when I had smoked four pipes I would no longer want her.

I had been afraid of the primitive, had wanted it broken gently, but here it came on us in a breath, as we stumbled up through the dung and the cramped and stinking huts to our lampless sleeping place among the rats. It was the worst one need fear, and it was bearable because it was inescapable.

I am interested in the blueness of the cheese.

disappointment had to be postponed, hope kept alive as long as possible;

There I go again. I want. I don't want. If I could love You, I could love Henry. God was made man. He was Henry with his astigmatism, Richard with his spots, not only Maurice. If I could love a leper's sores, couldn't I love the boringness of Henry? But I'd turn from the leper if he were here, I suppose, as I shut myself away from Henry. I want the dramatic always. I imagine I'm ready for the pain of your nails... Dear God, I'm no use. I'm still the same bitch and fake. Clear me out of the way.

You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can't steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn't Christian, self-sacrifice isn't Christian, charity isn't, remorse isn't. I expect the cavemen wept to see another's tears.

Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

The Lord is my shepherd. But if we are sheep why in heaven's name should we trust our shepherd? He's going to guard us from the wolves all right, oh yes, but only so that he can sell us later to the butcher.

Married people grow like each other.

Don't you believe it. I'll tell you what life is. It's gaol, it's not knowing where to get some money. Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear 'em shrieking from the upper windows- children being born. It's dying slowly.

and then beginning to go back to what you can't even remember.

I know myself, and I know the depth of my selfishness. I cannot be at ease (and to be at ease is my chief wish) if someone else is in pain, visibly or audibly or tactually. Sometimes this is mistaken by the innocent for unselfishness, when all I am doing is sacrificing a small good - in this case postponement in attending to my hurt - for the sake of a far greater good) a peace of mind when I need think only of myself.