717 Quotes by Graham Greene

I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It’s the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate.

When I began to realize how often we quarrelled, how often I picked on her with nervous irritation, I became aware that our love was doomed: love had turned into a love-affair with a beginning and an end.

I could have hated him for saying it: it was like a claim. If you really loved me, I thought, you’d behave like any other injured husband. You’d get angry and your anger would set me free.

There was not much one could do; he decided at least to be good.

There are men whom one has an irresistible desire to tease: men whose virtues one doesn’t share.

I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect – it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman.

One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.

Wouldn’t we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that’s why men have invented God – a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bam-boozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers.

I can’t talk you in terms of time – your time and my time are different.