Graham Greene quotes

Heresy is another word for freedom of thought. (Graham Greene)
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey. View quote
Graham Greene
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution. View quote
Graham Greene
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered. View quote
Graham Greene
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline. View quote
Graham Greene
Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac. View quote
Graham Greene
It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. View quote
Graham Greene
I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect - it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. View quote
Graham Greene
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in. View quote
Graham Greene
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. View quote
Graham Greene
When we are not sure, we are alive. (Graham Greene)
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction. View quote
Graham Greene
My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane. View quote
Graham Greene
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully. View quote
Graham Greene
Reality in our century is not something to be faced. View quote
Graham Greene
Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. View quote
Graham Greene
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous. View quote
Graham Greene
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, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. View quote
Graham Greene
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. View quote
Graham Greene
However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance -- so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature. View quote
Graham Greene
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance. (Graham Greene)
You cannot love without intuition. View quote
Graham Greene
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. View quote
Graham Greene
We mustn't complain too much of being comedians -- it's an honorable profession. If only we could be good ones the world might gain at least a sense of style. We have failed -- that's all. We are bad comedians, we aren't bad men. View quote
Graham Greene
We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to. View quote
Graham Greene