717 Quotes by Graham Greene

Innocence is a kind of insanity.

One forgets the dead quite quickly; one doesn’t wonder about the dead-what is he doing now, who is he with?

He stumbled on an old boot and put his hand on the stones to save himself: they had all the cold of the sea and had never been warmed by sun under these pillars.

Everything had seemed possibile. One could laugh at daydreams, but so long as you had the capacity to daydream, there was a chance that you might develop some of the qualities which you dreamed. It was like the religious discipline: words however emptily repeated can in time for a habit, a kind of unnoticed sediment at the bottom of the mind – until one day to you own surprise you find yourself acting on the belief you thought you didn’t believe in.

She wasn’t religious. She didn’t believe in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, Ouija boards, tables which rapped and little inept voices speaking plaintively of flowers.

He sat heavily down on a tall tubular adjustable chair, which shortened suddenly under his weight and split him on the floor. Somebody always leaves a banana-skin on the scene of a tragedy.

Sentimentality – that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.

The world doesn’t make any heroes anymore.

I had come into this affair with my eyes open, knowing that one day this must end, and yet, when the sense of insecurity, the logical belief in the hopeless future descended like melancholia, I would badger her and badger her, as though I wanted to bring the future in now at the door, an unwanted and premature guest.