717 Quotes by Graham Greene

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.

The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference; the doubter fights only with himself.

You were there teaching me to squander, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for Pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace-he needs it more.

Cynicism is cheap – you can buy it at any Monoprix store – it’s built into all poor-quality goods.

A brain is only capable of what it could conceive, andit couldnt concieve what it hasnt experienced.

O God, You’ve done enough, You’ve robbed me of enough, I’m too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever.

I’m just a bad writer who drinks too much and falls in love with girls.

If I were writing a novel I would end it here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I’m beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here.

A writer’s knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.