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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

Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.
GRAHAM GREENE

Attraction Beautiful Body Success War
One can’t love humanity. One can only love people.
GRAHAM GREENE

Humanity Love Oneself People
Hate is an automatic response to fear, for fear humiliates.
GRAHAM GREENE

Fear Hate Humiliation Response
The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
GRAHAM GREENE

Boredom Greatness Party People Word Writing
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

Guard Harm Innocence Protection Wisdom World
It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
GRAHAM GREENE

Impossible Life Oneself Prison Trust
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

Bad Forget Goodness Imagination Journalism Memories Yourself
She mixes religion with desertion to make it sound noble.
GRAHAM GREENE

Desertion Noble Religion Sound
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.
GRAHAM GREENE

Choice Moments Story
It is one of the strange discoveries a man can make that life, however you lead it, contains moments of exhilaration; there are always comparisons which can be made with worse times: even in danger and misery the pendulum swings.
GRAHAM GREENE

Dangerous Discover Leadership Life Man Misery Strange Time Worst
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in…We should be thankful we cannot see the horrors and degradations lying around our childhood, in cupboards and bookshelves, everywhere.
GRAHAM GREENE

Book Childhood Future Moments Ourselves Thankful
It’s a good world if you don’t weaken.
GRAHAM GREENE

Goodness Weakness World Yourself
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

Distance Fiction Journalism Novel Reason Truth Try Writing
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

Case Death Fear Priest Wrong
Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.
GRAHAM GREENE

Absence Forever Time
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.
GRAHAM GREENE

Avoid Beautiful Discover Face Happiness Love Tears Togetherness Ugly
Hate is a lack of imagination.
GRAHAM GREENE

Hate Imagination One Liner
It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.
GRAHAM GREENE

Human Interest Strike
Innocence is a kind of insanity.
GRAHAM GREENE

Innocence Kind One Liner Sanity
To be in love is to see yourself as someone else sees you, it is to be in love with the falsified and exalted image of yourself. In love we are incapable of honor – the courageous act is no more than playing a part to an audience of two.
GRAHAM GREENE

Act Audience Courage Image Love Respect
An autobiography is only ‘a sort of life’ – it may contain less errors of fact than a biography, but it is of necessity even more selective: it begins later and it ends prematurely.
GRAHAM GREENE

Beginning Errors Life Necessary Selection
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
GRAHAM GREENE

Bad Journalism Media Word
There’s a virtue in slowness, which we have lost.
GRAHAM GREENE

Lost Slow Virtue
In a mad world it always seems simpler to obey.
GRAHAM GREENE

Madness Obey Simplicity World
So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.
GRAHAM GREENE

Desert Escape Silence Yourself
We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.
GRAHAM GREENE

Assignment Death Life
They are always saying God loves us. If thats love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.
GRAHAM GREENE

God Kindness Love Myself

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

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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