Graham Greene: Trending quotes

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Graham Greene: 328 quotes35 likes

“I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book – the unconscious worked on it instead…”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 2
The End of the Affair (1951)

“[About Pinkie's inability to empathise] The imagination hadn't awoken. That was his strength. He couldn't see through other people's eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy.”

Graham Greene book Brighton Rock

Brighton Rock (1938)

“It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.”

Speech on receiving the Shakespeare Prize awarded by the University of Hamburg, Germany (1969)

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

Independent (London, April 4, 1991)