Quote

Life would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.

Graham Greene

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Graham Greene
Age: 86 †
Born: 1904
Born: October 2
Died: 1991
Died: April 3
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
Berkhamsted
Hertfordshire
Henry Graham Greene
Would
Night
Wouldn
Fraction
Time
Light
Nobody
Fractions
Life
Change
Second
Passage
Ever
Realizing
Phrase
Might
Knew
Passages
Whole
Lasts
Phrases
Long
Last
Clock
Purgatory
Really
Pain
Depends
Clocks

More quotes by Graham Greene

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I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.
Graham Greene
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She had lost all our memories for ever, and it was as though by dying she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality. It was the first stage of my own death, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs.
Graham Greene
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That instinct for human character that is perhaps inherent in an imaginative writer.
Graham Greene
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For a good man fame is always a problem.
Graham Greene
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Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
Graham Greene
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Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.
Graham Greene
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He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.
Graham Greene
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I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.
Graham Greene
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Lust is not the worst thing. It is because any day, any time, lust may turn into love that we have to avoid it. And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
Graham Greene
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As the end of the what is called the 'sexual life' the only love which has lasted is the love which has everything, every disappointment, every failure and every betrayal, which has accepted even the sad fact that in the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship.
Graham Greene
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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.
Graham Greene
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Cruel men cry easily at the cinema.
Graham Greene
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In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.
Graham Greene
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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.
Graham Greene
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The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.
Graham Greene
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...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.
Graham Greene
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Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
Graham Greene
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Fun... human nature... does no one any harm... Regular as clockwork the old excuses came back into the alert, sad and dissatisfied brain--nothing ever matched the deep excitement of the regular desire. Men always failed you when it came to the act. She might just as well have been to the pictures.
Graham Greene
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My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.
Graham Greene
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My fellow journalists called themselves correspondents I preferred the title of reporter. I wrote what I saw. I took no action -- even an opinion is a kind of action.
Graham Greene