717 Quotes by Graham Greene

Have you seen a room from which faith has gone? . . . Like a marriage from which love has gone. . . . And patience, patience everywhere like a fog.

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.

It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Tea at college was served on long tables with an urn at the end of each. Long baguettes of bread, three to a table, were set out with meagre portions of butter and jam; the china was coarse to withstand the schoolboy-clutch and the tea strong. At the Hôtel de Paris I was astonished at the fragility of the cups, the silver teapot, the little triangular savoury sandwiches, the éclairs stuffed with cream.

As long as nothing happens anything is possible...

Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.

Those who marry God can become domesticated too - it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word Love means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and Ave Maria like dearest is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves - it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.