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
They can print statistics and count the populations in hundreds of thousands, but to each man a city consists of no more than a few streets, a few houses, a few people. Remove those few and a city exists no longer except as a pain in the memory, like a pain of an amputated leg no longer there.
She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood-for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.
All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism; what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.
To comfort me is like the wrong memory at the wrong place or time: if one is lonely one prefers discomfort.
All good novelists have bad memories.
He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin at mid-day, the smell of flowers under a balcony, the clang of corrugated iron, an ugly bird flopping from perch to perch.
If one is going to write about war, self respect demands that one
It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.
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.
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.
Cynicism is cheap -- you can buy it at any Monoprix store -- it's built into all poor-quality goods.
They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.