Quotes by Graham Greene

“Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politick. Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate.”

“He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness -- the sense that is where we really belong.”

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failur”

“A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.”

“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.”

“You think it more difficult to turn air into wine than to turn wine into blood?”

“Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.”

“Those who marry God can become domesticated too / its 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 worlds marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves / it was Gods taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.”

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

“He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.”

“Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

“Volume depends precisely on the writers having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.”

“There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you cant think what to do with the long winter evenings.”

“When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it. He must always be a stranger to the place he loves, and its people.”

“The artist doesnt have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write dont have the time to read reviews.”

“Wonder rather than doubt is the root of knowledge”

“Isnt it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity...”

“Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.”

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what its about, but the inner music that words make.”

“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.”