Quote

A ruling passion gives to a shelf of novels the unity of a system.

Graham Greene

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Novels
Unity
Gives
Novel
System
Shelf
Passion
Shelves
Giving
Ruling

More quotes by Graham Greene

Image
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
Image
Hate is a lack of imagination.
Graham Greene
Image
A single feat of daring can alter the whole conception of what is possible.
Graham Greene
Image
You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
Graham Greene
Image
The hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation. Tension is more often shown in the studied action.
Graham Greene
Image
At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.
Graham Greene
Image
We'd forgive most things if we knew the facts.
Graham Greene
Image
You don't bless what you love...It's when you want to love and you can't manage it. You stretch out your hands and you say God forgive me that I can't love but bless this thing anyway...We have to bless what we hate...It would be better to love, but that's not always possible.
Graham Greene
Image
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
Image
Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham Greene
Image
I had never known her before and I had never loved her so much. The more we know the more we love, I thought.
Graham Greene
Image
So much of life [is] a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing [is] ever lost by delay.
Graham Greene
Image
Who knows whether there may not be a moment in childhood when the world changes forever, like making a face when the clock strikes?
Graham Greene
Image
I say that home is where there is a chair and a glass.
Graham Greene
Image
When I replied that I loved her too in that way, I was the liar, not she, for I never lose the consciousness of time: to me the present is never here: it is always last year or next week.
Graham Greene
Image
...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.
Graham Greene
Image
Its typical of Mexico, of the whole human race perhaps — violence in favour of an ideal and then the ideal lost but the violence just going on.
Graham Greene
Image
The problem of pretending to be alive.
Graham Greene
Image
Men can become twins with age. The past was their common womb the six months of rain and the six months of sun was the period of their common gestation. They needed only a few words and a few gestures to convey their meaning. They had graduated through the same fevers, they were moved by the same love and contempt.
Graham Greene
Image
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.
Graham Greene