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I Could Have Waited Years, Now That I Knew The End Of The Story. I Was Cold And Wet And Very Happy. I Could Even Look With Charity Towards The Altar And The Figure Dangling There. She Loves Us Both, I Thought, But If There Is To Be A Conflict Between An Image And A Man, I Know Who Will Win. I Could Put My Hand On Her Thigh Or My Mouth On Her Breast; He Was Imprisoned Behind The Altar And Couldn't Move To Plead His Cause.

-Graham Greene

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I Could Have Waited

Graham Greene

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I Could Have Waited Years, Now That I Knew The End Of The Story. I Was Cold And Wet And Very Happy. I Could Even Look With Charity Towards The Altar And The Figure Dangling There. She Loves Us Both, I Thought, But If There Is To Be A Conflict Between An Image And A Man, I Know Who Will Win. I Could Put My Hand On Her Thigh Or My Mouth On Her Breast; He Was Imprisoned Behind The Altar And Couldn't Move To Plead His Cause.

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I Measured Love By The Extent Of My Jealousy.

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Innocence Is Like A Dumb Leper Who Has Lost His Bell, Wandering The World, Meaning No Harm.

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Hate Is A Lack Of Imagination.

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Sometimes I Get So 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 Realise That I Feel Exactly The Same. What He Says Aloud, I Say To Myself Silently And Write It Here.

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Love Had Turned Into "love Affair" With A Begining And An End.

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Beauty Is Like Success: We Can't Love It For Long.

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The Problem Of Pretending To Be Alive.

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You Cannot Love Without Intuition.

Destruction After All Is A Form Of Creation.

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With Your Great Schemes, You Ruin Our Happiness Like A Harvester Ruins A Mouse's Nest: I Hate You, God, I Hate You As Though You Existed.

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I Hate You, God. I Hate You As Though You Actually Exist.

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Eternity Is Said Not To Be An Extension Of Time But An Absence Of Time, And Sometimes It Seemed To Me That Her Abandonment Touched That Strange Mathematical Point Of Endlessness, A Point With No Width, Occupying No Space.

We'd Forgive Most Things If We Knew The Facts.

Those Who Marry God Can Become Domesticated Too - It's Just As Hum-drum A Marriage As All The Others. The Word Love Means A Formal Touch Of The Lips As In The Ceremony Of The Mass, And Ave Maria Like Dearest Is A Phrase To Open A Letter. This Marriage Like The World's Marriages Was Held Together By Habits And Tastes Shared In Common Between God And Themselves - It Was God's Taste To Be Worshipped And Their Taste To Worship, But Only At Stated Hours Like A Suburban Embrace On A Saturday Night.

Suffering Is Not Increased By Numbers; One Body Can Contain All The Suffering The World Can Feel.

So Much Of A Novelist's Writing, As I Have Said, Takes Place In The Unconscious: In Those Depths The Last Word Is Written Before The First Word Appears On The Paper. We Remember Details Of Our Story, We Do Not Invent Them.

O God, You've Done Enough, You've Robbed Me Of Enough, I'm Too Tired And Old To Learn To Love, Leave Me Alone For Ever.

Cynicism Is Cheap - You Can Buy It At Any Monoprix Store - It's Built Into All Poor-quality Goods.

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.

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.

Champagne, If You Are Seeking The Truth, Is Better Than A Lie Detector.

God Is Love. I Don't Say The Heart Doesn't Feel A Taste Of It, But What A Taste. The Smallest Glass Of Love Mixed With A Pint Pot Of Ditch-water. We Wouldn't Recognize That Love. It Might Even Look Like Hate. It Would Be Enough To Scare Us - God's Love.

I Can't Talk You In Terms Of Time --your Time And My Time Are Different

Grief And Disappointment Are Like Hate: They Make Men Ugly With Self-pity And Bitterness. And How Selfish They Make Us Too.

As Long As One Suffers One Lives.

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.

Cruel Men Cry Easily At The Cinema.

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.

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.

Indifference And Pride Look Very Much Alike, And He Probably Thought I Was Proud.

It's A Good World If You Don't Weaken.

One Has No Talent. I Have No Talent. It's Just A Question Of Working, Of Being Willing To Put In The Time.

In The End There Is No Desire So Deep As The Simple Desire For Companionship.

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.

When He Was Young, He Had Thought Love Had Something To Do With Understanding, But With Age He Knew That No Human Being Understood Another. Love Was The Wish To Understand, And Presently With Constant Failure The Wish Died, And Love Died Too Perhaps Or Changed Into This Painful Affection, Loyalty, Pity.

My Fellow Journalists Called Themselves Correspondents; I Preferred The Title Of Reporter. I Wrote What I Saw. I Took No Action -- Even An Opinion Is A Kind Of Action.

We Never Get Accustomed To Being Less Important To Other People Than They Are To Us.

Hate Is An Automatic Response To Fear, For Fear Humiliates.

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He Entered The Territory Of Lies Without A Passport For Return.

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It Is The Same In Life: Sometimes It Is More Difficult To Make A Scene Than To Die.

We Remember The Details Of Our Story, We Do Not Invent Them.

He Couldn't Tell That This Was One Of Those Occasions A Man Never Forgets: A Small Cicatrice Had Been Made On The Memory, A Wound That Would Ache Whenever Certain Things Combined - The Taste Of Gin At Mid-day, The Smell Of Flowers Under A Balcony, The Clang Of Corrugated Iron, An Ugly Bird Flopping From Perch To Perch.

I Get Fed Up With All This Nonsense Of Ringing People Up And Lighting Cigarettes And Answering The Doorbell That Passes For Action In So Many Modern Plays.

I Couldn't Help Wondering, Is My Husband So Unattractive That No Woman Has Ever Wanted Him? Except Me, Of Course. I Must Have Wanted Him, In A Way, Once, But I've Forgotten Why, And I Was Too Young To Know What I Was Choosing.

Never Presume Yours Is A Better Morality.

Happiness Is Never Really So Welcome As Changelessness.

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.

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.

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.

Insecurity Is The Worst Sense That Lovers Feel; Sometimes The Most Humdrum Desireless Marriage Seems Better. Insecurity Twists Meanings And Poisons Trust.

A Man Kept His Character Even When He Was Insane.

I Had Committed Myself: Without Love I'd Have To Go Through The Gestures Of Love.

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Alexander The Great

Barbara Januszkiewicz

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