Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene OM CH, better known by his pen name Graham Greene, was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers. He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 October 1904
But I'm a bad priest, you see. I know--from experience--how much beauty Satan carried down with him when he fell. Nobody ever said the fallen angels were the ugly ones. Oh, no, they were just as quick and light and . . .
To comfort me is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time: if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.
I'm only saying I want you to be happy. I hate your being unhappy. I don't mind anything you do that makes you happy." You just want an excuse. If I sleep with anybody else, you feel you can do the same - any time." That's neither here nor there. I want you to be happy, that's all." You'd make my bed for me?" Perhaps.
It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.
All good novelists have bad memories.
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.
How often the priest had heard the same confession--Man was so limited: he hadn't even the ingenuity to invent a new vice: the animals knew as much. It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.
Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.
Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.
The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.
People who like quotes love meaningless generalizations
All the emotions have something in common. People are quite aware of the sorrow there always is in lust, but they are not so aware of the lust there is in sorrow.
What an unbearable creature he must have been in those days--and yet in those days he had been comparatively innocent. That was another mystery: it sometimes seemed to him that venial sins--impatience, an unimportant lie, pride, a neglected opportunity--cut you off from grace more completely than the worst sins of all. Then, in his innocence, he had felt no love for anyone; now in his corruption he had learnt.