717 Quotes by Graham Greene

We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.

When a train pulls into a great city I am reminded of the closing moments of an ouverture.

In Gower Street they were sweeping up glass, and a building smoked into the new day like a candle which some late reveler had forgotten to snuff.

With Your great schemes, You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse’s nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.

I’m afraid of the dark.′ And his mother: ‘Don’t be silly. You know there’s nothing to be afraid in the dark.’ But he knew hte falsity of the reasoning; he knew how they taught also that there was nothing to fear in death, and how fearfully they avoided the idea of it.

The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him.

The main characters in a novel must necessarily have some kinship to the author, they come out of his body as a child comes from the womb, then the umbilical cord is cut, and they grow into independence. The more the author knows of his own character the more he can distance himself from his invented characters and the more room they have to grow in.

The Captain turned away from the mirror and said, ‘Thank God, I’m not in danger of prison here. I’m only in danger of death.

She was not too young to be wise, but she was too young to know that wisdom shouldn’t be spoken aloud when you are happy.