717 Quotes by Graham Greene

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

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

A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

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.

I'm not involved, not involved," I repeated. It has been an article of my creed. The human condition being what it was, let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved. My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents; I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action – even an opinion is a kind of action.

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.

I was a correspondent: I thought in headlines.

You know, if you live in a place for long you cease to write about it.''Of course I always like to know what the man on the spot has to say,' he replied guardedly.'And then check it with York?' 'Yes.