Graham Greene Quotes

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.

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

The old lady knelt, saying her 'Hail Mary'; She didn't believe — but among Catholics even the sceptical are courteous.

He’ll always be innocent, you can’t blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.

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

A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity— that was a quality God's image carried with it.

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.

At the end of what is called the "sexual life" the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.

That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.

Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises ...

You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.