Graham Greene

When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.

We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.

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.

And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.

I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.

I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.

In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

With Your great schemes, You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.

Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.

One can't love humanity. One can only love people.

He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.

It is the same in life: sometimes it is more difficult to make a scene than to die.

God save us always,' I said 'from the innocent and the good.

Innocence is a kind of insanity

The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.

One has no talent. I have no talent. It's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.