Quote

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.

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
Find
Everything
Eats
Self
Selfish
Hard
Express
Even
Havens
Thing
Haven
Expression
Ends

More quotes by Graham Greene

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Never presume yours is a better morality.
Graham Greene
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Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.
Graham Greene
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Death was far more certain than God.
Graham Greene
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Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?
Graham Greene
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One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge minor ones may be photographed.
Graham Greene
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Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
Graham Greene
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A ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system.
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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Suffering is not increased by numbers one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.
Graham Greene
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He had stylized himself--life was easier that way. He had chosen a physical mould just as writer chooses a technical form.
Graham Greene
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What have we all got to expect that we allow ourselves to be so lined with disappointment?
Graham Greene
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I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.
Graham Greene
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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.
Graham Greene
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Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
Graham Greene
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There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
Graham Greene
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Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Graham Greene
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I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.
Graham Greene
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At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.
Graham Greene
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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
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You cannot love without intuition.
Graham Greene