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All good novelists have bad memories. What you remember comes out as journalism what you forget goes into the compost of the imagination.

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
Comes
Remember
Compost
Good
Novelists
Journalism
Memories
Goes
Imagination
Forget

More quotes by 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.
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In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.
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The border means more than a customs house, a passport officer, a man with a gun. Over there everything is going to be different life is never going to be quite the same again after your passport has been stamped.
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Fame is a powerful aphrodisiac.
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He's satisfied with himself. If you have a soul you can't be satisfied.
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I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.
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In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.
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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It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
Graham Greene
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Melodrama is one of my working tools and it enables me to obtain effects that would be unobtainable otherwise on the other hand I am not deliberately melodramatic don't get too annoyed if I say that I write in the way that I do because I am what I am.
Graham Greene
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A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.
Graham Greene
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From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.
Graham Greene
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The problem of pretending to be alive.
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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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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I don't care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations...I don't think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren't there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?
Graham Greene
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Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.
Graham Greene
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Beauty is like success: we can't love it for long.
Graham Greene
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Human nature is not black and white but black and grey.
Graham Greene
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I'm only saying I want you to be happy. I hate your being unhappy. I don't mind anything you do that makes you happy. You just want an excuse. If I sleep with anybody else, you feel you can do the same - any time. That's neither here nor there. I want you to be happy, that's all. You'd make my bed for me? Perhaps.
Graham Greene