Graham Greene quotes

Graham Greene was an acclaimed English novelist, playwright, and journalist recognized for his explorations of moral and political issues. His works often blend elements of suspense and psychological depth within complex international settings. He became one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, with novels such as "The Power and the Glory" and "The Quiet American." Here are 200 of his quotes:

The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.

Graham Greene

God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed - that is the meaning of evolution.

Graham Greene

Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

Graham Greene

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.

Graham Greene

Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.

Graham Greene

It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.

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.

Graham Greene

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

Graham Greene

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

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.

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.

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.

Graham Greene

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Graham Greene

You cannot love without intuition.

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.

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.

Graham Greene

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

Graham Greene