Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully. – Graham Greene
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
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
I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect – it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman. – Graham Greene
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction. – Graham Greene
No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness. – Graham Greene
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed – that is the meaning of evolution. – Graham Greene
The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. – Graham Greene
The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him. – Graham Greene
Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. – Graham Greene
My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane. – Graham Greene
People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery. – Graham Greene
Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. – Graham Greene
The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. – Graham Greene
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance. – Graham Greene
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. – Graham Greene
They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness. – Graham Greene
It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself. – Graham Greene
