Graham Greene

A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.

He could distinguish the approach of Milly like that of a police car from a long way off. Whistles instead of sirens warned him of her coming.

Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven’t even got a self to express.

Men have prayed in prison, men have prayed in slums and concentration camps. It's only the middle class who demand to pray in suitable surroundings.

Politics, war, marriage, crime, adultery. Everything that exists in the world has something to do with money.

They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.

The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

For a good man fame is always a problem.

Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncan’s death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth?

Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?

Happiness is never really so welcome as changelessness.

It’s a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible.

American bankers believe in the personal touch; the teller conveys a sense that he happens to be there accidentally and he is overjoyed at the lucky chance of the encounter.

No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.

There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.

A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.

People who like quotations love meaningless generalizations.

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

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another name?

Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.

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

The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife, who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Or perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of the duck unserved.

A family library is a breeding-place for character.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

HERESY IS ONLY ANOTHER WORD FOR FREEDOM OF THOUGHT.

I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused.

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.

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

What do we ever get nowadays from reading to equal the excitement and the revelation in those first fourteen years?

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.

In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

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.