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10c2b45
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You know what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
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sinister
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Graham Greene |
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1d394c2
|
The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.
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pain
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Graham Greene |
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5e95f1d
|
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.
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writing
life
therapy
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Graham Greene |
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1504117
|
Like some wines our love could neither mature nor travel.
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romance
love
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Graham Greene |
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15e47c5
|
It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.
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love
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Graham Greene |
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28e22ab
|
A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
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writing
beginning
end
creative-process
storytelling
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Graham Greene |
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956c997
|
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.
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love
|
Graham Greene |
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b09470d
|
Hate is a lack of imagination.
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hate
imagination
|
Graham Greene |
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b0bdfb9
|
But it is impossible to go through life without trust; that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
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|
Graham Greene |
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b3968be
|
Innocence is a kind of insanity
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innocent
insanity
|
Graham Greene |
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0e59c67
|
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?
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war
politics
love
nationality
loyalty
|
Graham Greene |
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caf4456
|
I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.
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hate
|
Graham Greene |
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e6aeb34
|
Her face looked ugly in the attempt to avoid tears; it was an ugliness which bound him to her more than any beauty could have done. It isn't being happy together, he thought as though it were a fresh discovery, that makes one love--it's being unhappy together.
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Graham Greene |
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1113a93
|
Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.
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|
Graham Greene |
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8c80eda
|
I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.
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|
Graham Greene |
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18aa2c4
|
You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.
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mercy
|
Graham Greene |
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31f2e56
|
Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?
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|
Graham Greene |
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da6e76f
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We forget very easily what gives us pain.
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|
Graham Greene |
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d03c33a
|
I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.
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friendship
heartbreak
love
|
Graham Greene |
|
2271160
|
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, selfishness, evil -- or else an absolute ignorance.
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happiness
ignorance
evil
|
Graham Greene |
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c85d129
|
I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing ..
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Graham Greene |
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d751cf1
|
Time has its revenges, but revenge seems so often sour. Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God - a being capable of understanding.
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Graham Greene |
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07ef8f3
|
I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.
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passion
love
|
Graham Greene |
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9c71bb4
|
Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.
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|
life
love
value
|
Graham Greene |
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31d9d39
|
You needn't be so scared. Love doesn't end. Just because we don't see each other...
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|
Graham Greene |
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134f763
|
Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.
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|
Graham Greene |
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b8f10f1
|
Sooner or later...one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.
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|
Graham Greene |
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df827a9
|
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.
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|
Graham Greene |
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37c6cff
|
I'm tired and I'm sick to death of being without you.
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|
Graham Greene |
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64e952f
|
If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?
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|
Graham Greene |
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481beff
|
I wish sometimes you had a few bad motives, you might understand a little more about human beings.
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|
Graham Greene |
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75c8861
|
So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.
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|
Graham Greene |
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02d467c
|
It was like having a box of chocolates shut in the bedroom drawer. Until the box was empty it occupied the mind too much.
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|
Graham Greene |
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af7a501
|
Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.
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|
Graham Greene |
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2fc72f9
|
When you visualized a man or a woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity . . . that was a quality God's image carried with it . . . when you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, the shape of the mouth, how the hair grew, it was impossible to hate. Hate was just a failure of imagination.
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hatred
imagination
|
Graham Greene |
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a4234e4
|
I'm not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I'm tired and I don't want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don't want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.
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|
Graham Greene |
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415b021
|
One can't love humanity. One can only love people.
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|
Graham Greene |
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13c68a0
|
Indifference and pride look very much alike, and he probably thought I was proud.
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|
Graham Greene |
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1d41569
|
Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.
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|
holidays
|
Graham Greene |
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6dd344f
|
And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.
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love
|
Graham Greene |
|
2c1408a
|
That was my first instinct -- to protect him. It never occurred to me that there was a greater need to protect myself. 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.
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protection
|
Graham Greene |
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d4cd768
|
I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.
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|
Graham Greene |
|
5ab1123
|
And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
|
|
|
Graham Greene |
|
ec36bc7
|
When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most. It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself.
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Graham Greene |