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So Much In Writing Depends On The Superficiality Of One's Days. One May Be Preoccupied With Shopping And Income Tax Returns And Chance 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.

-Graham Greene

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So Much In Writing

Graham Greene

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So Much In Writing Depends On The Superficiality Of One's Days. One May Be Preoccupied With Shopping And Income Tax Returns And Chance 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.

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He Had Stylized Himself--life Was Easier That Way. He Had Chosen A Physical Mould Just As Writer Chooses A Technical Form.

This (vietnam) Was A Land Of Rebellious Barons. It Was Like Europe In The Middle Ages. But What Were The Americans Doing Here? Columbus Had Not Yet Discovered Their Country.

They Can Print Statistics And Count The Populations In Hundreds Of Thousands, But To Each Man A City Consists Of No More Than A Few Streets, A Few Houses, A Few People. Remove Those Few And A City Exists No Longer Except As A Pain In The Memory, Like A Pain Of An Amputated Leg No Longer There.

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.

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.

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.

I Had To Touch You With My Hands, I Had To Taste You With My Tongue; One Can't Love And Do Nothing.

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

However Great A Man's Fear Of Life, Suicide Remains The Courageous Act, The Clear-headed Act Of A Mathematician. The Suicide Has Judged By The Laws Of Chance - So Many Odds Against One That To Live Will Be More Miserable Than To Die. His Sense Of Mathematics Is Greater Than His Sense Of Survival. But Think How A Sense Of Survival Must Clamor To Be Heard At The Last Moment, What Excuses It Must Present Of A Totally Unscientific Nature.

If I Stopped Loving Him, I Would Cease To Believe In His Love. If I Loved God, Then I Would Believe In His Love For Me. It's Not Enough To Need It. We Have To Love First, And I Don't Know How. But I Need It, How I Need It.

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

Success Is More Dangerous Than Failure, The Ripples Break Over A Wider Coastline.

Congratulations

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

My Passion For Sarah Had Killed Simple Lust Forever. Never Again Would I Be Able To Enjoy A Woman Without Love.

Death Never Mattered At Those Times - In The Early Days I Even Used To Pray For It: The Shattering Annihilation That Would Prevent For Ever The Getting Up, The Putting On Of Clothes, The Wathchign Her Torch Trail Across To The Opposite Side Of The Common Like The Tail-light Of A Low Car Driving Away.

There Was Always Another Side To A Joke, The Side Of The Victim.

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?

We Can Love With Our Minds, But Can We Love Only With Our Minds? Love Extends Itself All The Time, So That We Can Love Even With Our Senseless Nails: We Love Even With Our Clothes, So That A Sleeve Can Feel A Sleeve.

You Think It More Difficult To Turn Air Into Wine Than To Turn Wine Into Blood?.

As The End Of The What Is Called The 'sexual Life' The Only Love Which Has Lasted Is The Love Which Has Everything, Every Disappointment, Every Failure And Every Betrayal, Which Has Accepted Even The Sad Fact That In The End There Is No Desire So Deep As The Simple Desire For Companionship.

Pity Is Cruel. Pity Destroys.

One Forgets So Quickly One's Own Youth.

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.

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.

Cruel Men Cry Easily At The Cinema.

And When We Love Our Sin Then We Are Damned Indeed.

Communism, My Friend, Is More Than Marxism, Just As Catholicism Is More Than The Roman Curia. There Is A Mystique As Well As A Politick. Catholics And Communists Have Committed Great Crimes, But At Least They Have Not Stood Aside, Like An Established Society, And Been Indifferent. I Would Rather Have Blood On My Hands Than Water Like Pilate.

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

In A Mad World It Always Seems Simpler To Obey.

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.

Doing Nothing, Badly.

Lies Had Deserted Me, And I Felt As Lonely As Though They Had Been My Only Friends.

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.

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.

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

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

There Is Always One Moment In Childhood When The Door Opens And Lets The Future In.

Unfortunately The Innocent Are Always Involved In Any Conflict. Always, Everywhere, There Is Some Voice Crying From A Tower.

So It Always Is: When You Escape To A Desert The Silence Shouts In Your Ear.

A Writer Doesn't Write For His Readers, Does He? Yet He Has To Take Elementary Precautions All The Same, To Make Them Comfortable.

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

Thought's A Luxury. Do You Think The Peasant Sits And Thinks Of God And Democracy When He Gets Inside His Mud Hut At Night?

Who Knows Whether There May Not Be A Moment In Childhood When The World Changes Forever, Like Making A Face When The Clock Strikes?

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.

I Measured Love By The Extent Of My Jealousy.

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.

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.

But I'm A Bad Priest, You See. I Know--from Experience--how Much Beauty Satan Carried Down With Him When He Fell. Nobody Ever Said The Fallen Angels Were The Ugly Ones. Oh, No, They Were Just As Quick And Light And . . .

No Building Was Safe From The Furniture, The Pictures, The Human Beings That It Would Presently Contain.

Rocinante Was Of More Value For A True Traveller Than A Jet Plane. Jet Planes Were For Business Men.

What Happens If You Drop All The Things That Make You I?

Media Is Just A Word That Has Come To Mean Bad Journalism.

In The Taxi I Let My Hand Lie On Her Leg Like A Promise, But I Had No Intention Of Keeping My Promise.

I Write About Situations That Are Common, Universal Might Be More Correct, In Which My Characters Are Involved And From Which Only Faith Can Redeem Them, Though Often The Actual Manner Of The Redemption Is Not Immediately Clear. They Sin, But There Is No Limit To God's Mercy And Because This Is Important, There Is A Difference Between Not Confessing In Fact, And The Complacent And The Pious May Not Realize It.

There Are Times When A Lover Longs To Be Also A Father And A Brother: He Is Jealous Of The Years He Hasn't Shared.

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.

Sooner Or Later... One Has To Take Sides. If One Is To Remain Human.

Sooner Or Later

Yesterday I Went Home With Him And We Did The Usual Things. I Haven't The Nerve To Put Them Down, But I'd Like To, Because Now When I'm Writing It's Already Tomorrow And I'm Afraid Of Getting To The End Of Yesterday. As Long As I Go On Writing, Yesterday Is Today And We Are Still Together

You Needn't Be So Scared. Love Doesn't End. Just Because We Don't See Each Other.

For God's Sake Stop Making People In Your Image. Harry Was Real. He Wasn't Just Your Hero And My Lover. He Was Harry. He Was In A Racket. He Did Bad Things. What About It? He Was The Man We Knew.

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.

One Gets Started, And Then, Suddenly, One Cannot Remember What Toothpaste They Use . . . 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.

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.

A Brain Is Only Capable Of What It Could Conceive, Andit Couldnt Concieve What It Hasnt Experienced

Hatred Seems To Work On The Same Glands As Love: It Even Produces The Same Actions. If We Had Not Been Taught How To Interpret The Story Of The Passion, Would We Have Been Able To Say From Their Actions Alone Whether It Was The Jealous Judas Or The Cowardly Peter Who Loved Christ?

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.

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.

Melodrama Is One Of My Working Tools And It Enables Me To Obtain Effects That Would Be Unobtainable Otherwise; On The Other Hand I Am Not Deliberately Melodramatic; Don't Get Too Annoyed If I Say That I Write In The Way That I Do Because I Am What I Am.

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.

Morality Comes With The Sad Wisdom Of Age, When The Sense Of Curiosity Has Withered.

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.

I Say That Home Is Where There Is A Chair And A Glass.

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.

Its Typical Of Mexico, Of The Whole Human Race Perhaps Violence In Favour Of An Ideal And Then The Ideal Lost But The Violence Just Going On.

What An Unbearable Creature He Must Have Been In Those Days--and Yet In Those Days He Had Been Comparatively Innocent. That Was Another Mystery: It Sometimes Seemed To Him That Venial Sins--impatience, An Unimportant Lie, Pride, A Neglected Opportunity--cut You Off From Grace More Completely Than The Worst Sins Of All. Then, In His Innocence, He Had Felt No Love For Anyone; Now In His Corruption He Had Learnt.

Reality In Our Century Is Not Something To Be Faced.

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.

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

She Was Not Too Young To Be Wise, But She Was Too Young To Know That Wisdom Shouldn't Be Spoken Aloud When You Are Happy.

You Don't Bless What You Love...it's When You Want To Love And You Can't Manage It. You Stretch Out Your Hands And You Say God Forgive Me That I Can't Love But Bless This Thing Anyway...we Have To Bless What We Hate...it Would Be Better To Love, But That's Not Always Possible.

Have You Seen A Room From Which Faith Has Gone? Like A Marriage From Which Love Has Gone. And Patience, Patience Everywhere Like A Fog.

People Who Like Quotes Love Meaningless Generalizations

She Had Lost All Our Memories For Ever, And It Was As Though By Dying She Had Robbed Me Of Part Of Myself. I Was Losing My Individuality. It Was The First Stage Of My Own Death, The Memories Dropping Off Like Gangrened Limbs.

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.

I Thought I Am Kissing Pain And Pain Belongs To You As Happiness Never Does. I Love You In Your Pain. I Could Almost Taste Metal And Salt In The Skin, And I Thought, How Good You Are. You Might Have Killed Us With Happiness, But You Let Us Be With You In Pain.

God Save Us Always,' I Said 'from The Innocent And The Good.

I Had Never Known Her Before And I Had Never Loved Her So Much. The More We Know The More We Love, I Thought.

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.

One's Life Is More Formed, I Sometimes Think, By Books Than By Human Beings: It Is Out Of Books One Learns About Love And Pain At Second Hand.

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

Sweet Are The Thoughts That Savor Of Content: The Quiet Mind Is Richer Than A Crown.

Great Inspirational

One's Life Is More Formed, I Sometimes Think, By Books Than By Human Beings: It Is Out Of Books One Learns About Love And Pain At Second Hand. Even If We Have The Happy Chance To Fall In Love, It Is Because We Have Been Conditioned By What We Have Read, And If I Had Never Known Love At All, Perhaps It Was Because My Father's Library Had Not Contained The Right Books.

Falling In Love

Lust Is Not The Worst Thing. It Is Because Any Day, Any Time, Lust May Turn Into Love That We Have To Avoid It. And When We Love Our Sin Then We Are Damned Indeed.

Human Nature Is Not Black And White But Black And Grey.

Black And White

When I Replied That I Loved Her Too In That Way, I Was The Liar, Not She, For I Never Lose The Consciousness Of Time: To Me The Present Is Never Here: It Is Always Last Year Or Next Week.

Friendship Is Something In The Soul. It Is A Thing One Feels. It Is Not A Return For Something.

For A Good Man Fame Is Always A Problem.

Any Man Who Knocks On The Door Of A Brothel Is Looking For God.

I Envied Those Who Could Believe In A God And I Distrusted Them. I Felt They Were Keeping Their Courage Up With A Fable Of The Changeless And The Permanent. Death Was Far More Certain Than God, And With Death There Would Be No Longer The Possibility Of Love Dying.

If I Had To Choose Between Life In The Soviet Union And Life In The U. S. A. , I Would Certainly Choose The Soviet Union.

We Are All Of Us Resigned To Death: It's Life We Aren't Resigned To.

Our Heroes Are Simple: They Are Brave, They Tell The Truth, They Are Good Swordsmen And They Are Never In The Long Run Really Defeated. That Is Why No Later Books Satisfy Us Like Those Which Were Read To Us In Childhood - For Those Promised A World Of Great Simplicity Of Which We Knew The Rules, But The Later Books Are Complicated And Contradictory With Experience; They Are Formed Out Of Our Own Disappointing Memories.

With A Novel, Which Takes Perhaps Years To Write, The Author Is Not The Same Man He Was At The End Of The Book As He Was At The Beginning. It Is Not Only That His Characters Have Developed-he Has Developed With Them, And This Nearly Always Gives A Sense Of Roughness To The Work: A Novel Can Seldom Have The Sense Of Perfection Which You Find In Chekhov's Story, The Lady With The Dog.

One Can't Love Humanity. One Can Only Love People.

For An Artist To Think In Terms Of Success Is Like A Priest Trying To Think In Terms Of Success.

...every Monologue Sooner Or Later Becomes A Discussion.

Sooner Or Later

If You Live In A Place For Long You Cease To Read About It.

As Long As One Suffers One Lives.

We Forget Very Easily What Gives Us Pain.

Fun... Human Nature... Does No One Any Harm... Regular As Clockwork The Old Excuses Came Back Into The Alert, Sad And Dissatisfied Brain--nothing Ever Matched The Deep Excitement Of The Regular Desire. Men Always Failed You When It Came To The Act. She Might Just As Well Have Been To The Pictures.

It Is A Great Danger For Everyone When What Is Shocking Changes.

Sometimes I See Myself Reflected Too Closely In Other Men For Comfort, And Then I Have An Enormous Wish To Believe In The Saints, In Heroic Virtue.

Despair Is The Price One Pays For Setting Oneself An Impossible Aim. It Is, One Is Told, The Unforgivable Sin, But It Is A Sin The Corrupt Or Evil Man Never Practices. He Always Has Hope. He Never Reaches The Freezing-point Of Knowing Absolute Failure. Only The Man Of Goodwill Carries Always In His Heart This Capacity For Damnation.

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.

A Major Character Has To Come Somehow Out Of The Unconscious.

Sentimentality - That's What We Call The Sentiment We Don't Share.

A Movie Is Not A Book. If The Source Material Is A Book, You Cannot Be Too Respectful Of The Book. All You Owe To The Book Is The Spirit.

I Wrote At The Start That This Was A Record Of Hate, And Walking There Beside Henry Towards The Evening Glass Of Beer, I Found The One Prayer That Seemed To Serve The Winter Mood: 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 Forever.

Like The Characters In Chekhov, They Have No Reserves -– You Learn The Most Intimate Secrets. You Get An Impression Of A World Peopled By Eccentrics, Of Odd Professions, Almost Incredible Stupidities, And, To Balance Them, Amazing Endurances.

Happiness Is Never Really So Welcome As Changelessness.

It Infuriated Him To Think That There Were Still People In The State Who Believed In A Loving And Merciful God. There Are Mystics Who Are Said To Have Experienced God Directly. He Was A Mystic, Too, And What He Had Experienced Was Vacancy--a Complete Certainty In The Existence Of A Dying, Cooling World, Of Human Beings Who Had Evolved From Animals For No Purpose At All.

They Think My Mother's Ashes Are Marijuana.

As Long As Nothing Happens Anything Is Possible.

Anything Is Possible

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.

The Subject Of A Novel Is Not The Plot. Who Remembers What Happened To Lucien De Rebempre In The End?

To Comfort Me Is Like The Wrong Memory At The Wrong Place Or Time: If One Is Lonely One Prefers Discomfort.

It's Strange How The Human Mind Swings Back And Forth, From One Extreme To Another. Does Truth Lie At Some Point Of The Pendulum's Swing, At A Point Where It Never Rests, Not In The Dull Perpendicular Mean Where It Dangles In The End Like A Windless Flag, But At An Angle, Nearer One Extreme Than Another? If Only A Miracle Could Stop The Pendulum At An Angle Of Sixty Degrees, One Would Believe The Truth Was There.

He Was Like A Child With Haemophilia: Every Contact Drew Blood.

Death Was Far More Certain Than God.

When We Are Not Sure, We Are Alive.

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.

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.

In Switzerland They Had Brotherly Love, Five Hundred Years Of Democracy And Peace, And What Did They Produce? The Cuckoo Clock!

Perhaps The Sexual Life Is The Great Test. If We Can Survive It With Charity To Those We Love And With Affection To Those We Have Betrayed, We Needn't Worry So Much About The Good And The Bad In Us. But Jealousy, Distrust, Cruelty, Revenge, Recrimination ... Then We Fail. The Wrong Is In That Failure Even If We Are The Victims And Not The Executioners. Virtue Is No Excuse.

They Had Been Corrupted By Money, And He Had Been Corrupted By Sentiment. Sentiment Was The More Dangerous, Because You Couldn’t Name Its Price. A Man Open To Bribes Was To Be Relied Upon Below A Certain Figure, But Sentiment Might Uncoil In The Heart At A Name, A Photograph, Even A Smell Remembered.

Tea At College Was Served On Long Tables With An Urn At The End Of Each. Long Baguettes Of Bread, Three To A Table, Were Set Out With Meagre Portions Of Butter And Jam; The China Was Coarse To Withstand The Schoolboy-clutch And The Tea Strong. At The Hôtel De Paris I Was Astonished At The Fragility Of The Cups, The Silver Teapot, The Little Triangular Savoury Sandwiches, The éclairs Stuffed With Cream.

Our Worst Enemies Here Are Not The Ignorant And Simple, However Cruel; Our Worst Enemies Are The Intelligent And Corrupt

Men Have Prayed In Prison, Men Have Prayed In Slums And Concentration Camps. It's Only The Middle Class Who Demand To Pray In Suitable Surroundings.

Thrillers Are Like Life, More Like Life Than You Are.

A Murderer Is Regarded By The Conventional World As Something Almost Monstrous, But A Murderer To Himself Is Only An Ordinary Man. It Is Only If The Murderer Is A Good Man That He Can Be Regarded As Monstrous.

If Only It Were Possible To Love Without Injury – Fidelity Isn’t Enough: I Had Been Faithful To Anne And Yet I Had Injured Her. The Hurt Is In The Act Of Possession: We Are Too Small In Mind And Body To Possess Another Person Without Pride Or To Be Possessed Without Humiliation. In A Way I Was Glad That My Wife Had Struck Out At Me Again – I Had Forgotten Her Pain For Too Long, And This Was The Only Kind Of Recompense I Could Give Her. Unfortunately The Innocent Are Always Involved In Any Conflict. Always, Everywhere, There Is Some Voice Crying From A Tower.

From Childhood I Had Never Believed In Permanence, And Yet I Had Longed For It. Always I Was Afraid Of Losing Happiness. This Month, Next Year...death Was The Only Absolute Value In My World. Lose Life And One Would Lose Nothing Again Forever.

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.

How Often The Priest Had Heard The Same Confession--man Was So Limited: He Hadn't Even The Ingenuity To Invent A New Vice: The Animals Knew As Much. It Was For This World That Christ Had Died: The More Evil You Saw And Heard About You, The Greater The Glory Lay Around The Death; It Was Too Easy To Die For What Was Good Or Beautiful, For Home Or Children Or Civilization--it Needed A God To Die For The Half-hearted And The Corrupt.

Men Can Become Twins With Age. The Past Was Their Common Womb; The Six Months Of Rain And The Six Months Of Sun Was The Period Of Their Common Gestation. They Needed Only A Few Words And A Few Gestures To Convey Their Meaning. They Had Graduated Through The Same Fevers, They Were Moved By The Same Love And Contempt.

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.

A Single Feat Of Daring Can Alter The Whole Conception Of What Is Possible.

It Was Like Having A Box Of Chocolates Shut In The Bedroom Drawer. Until The Box Was Empty It Occupied The Mind Too Much.

You Cannot Conceive, Nor Can I, Of The Appalling Strangeness Of The Mercy Of God.

You Cannot Control What You Love--you Watch It Driving Recklessly Towards The Broken Bridge, The Torn-up Track, The Horror Of Seventy Years Ahead.

He Was Impregnably Armored By His Good Intentions And His Ignorance.

Good Intentions

You Must Promise Me. You Can't Desire The End Without Desiring The Means.' Ah, But One Can, He Thought, One Can: One Can Desire The Peace Of Victory Without Desiring The Ravaged Towns.

You Cannot Love Without Intuition.

I Could Never Have Been A Pacifist. To Kill A Man Was Surely To Grant Him An Immeasurable Benefit. Oh Yes, People Always, Everywhere, Loved Their Enemies. It Was Their Friends They Preserved For Pain And Vacuity.

So Much In Writing Depends On The Superficiality Of One's Days.

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

The Problem Of Pretending To Be Alive.

Ordinary Life Goes On--that Has Saved Many A Man's Reason.

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.

Had Shakespeare Listened To The News Of Duncans Death In A Tavern Or Heard The Knocking On His Own Bedroom Door After He Had Finished The Writing Of Macbeth?

The Next Best Thing To Talking To Her Is Talking About Her.

I've Caught Belief Like A Disease. I've Fallen Into Belief Like I Fell In Love.

It Was As Though Our Love Were A Small Creature Caught In A Trap And Bleeding To Death: I Had To Shut My Eyes And Wring Its Neck.

Destruction After All Is A Form Of Creation.

It Is Impossible To Go Through Life Without Trust: That Is To Be Imprisoned In The Worst Cell Of All, Oneself.

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

In Human Relationships, Kindness And Lies Are Worth A Thousand Truths.

I Never Knew A Man Who Had Better Motives For All The Trouble He Caused.

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.

That Instinct For Human Character That Is Perhaps Inherent In An Imaginative Writer.

I Wish Sometimes You Had A Few Bad Motives, You Might Understand A Little More About Human Beings.

Eternity Is Said Not To Be An Extension Of Time But An Absence Of Time.

Despair Is The Price One Pays For Setting Himself An Impossible Aim.

Unforgivable Sin

I Had Very Good Dentures Once. Some Magnificent Gold Work. It's The Only Form Of Jewelry A Man Can Wear That Women Fully Appreciate.

At One With The One, It Didn't Mean A Thing Besides A Glass Of Guinness On A Sunny Day.

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.

Oh, I’m Not A Berkeleian. I Believe My Back’s Against This Wall. I Believe There’s A Sten Gun Over There.

God Created A Number Of Possibilities In Case Some Of His Prototypes Failed - That Is The Meaning Of Evolution.

One Never Knows Enough About Characters In Real Life To Put Them Into Novels. One Gets Started And Then, Suddenly, One Can Not Remember What Toothpaste They Use; What Are Their Views On Interior Decoration, And One Is Stuck Utterly. No, Major Characters Emerge; Minor Ones May Be Photographed.

I Aim To Be Content With What I Produce. It's An Aim I Never Achieve, But I Go Over My Work Word By Word, Time And Again, So As To Be As Little Dissatisfied As Possible.

A Ruling Passion Gives To A Shelf Of Novels The Unity Of A System.

I'm Only Saying I Want You To Be Happy. I Hate Your Being Unhappy. I Don't Mind Anything You Do That Makes You Happy." You Just Want An Excuse. If I Sleep With Anybody Else, You Feel You Can Do The Same - Any Time." That's Neither Here Nor There. I Want You To Be Happy, That's All." You'd Make My Bed For Me?" Perhaps.

Hope Was An Instinct Only The Reasoning Human Mind Could Kill. An Animal Never Knew Despair.

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.

...and Yet Could Swear It Was Just Then That I Fell In Love. It Wasn't, Of Course, Simply The Onions -- It Was The Sudden Sense Of An Individual Woman, Of A Frankness That Was So Often Later To Make Me Happy And Miserable.

She Mixes Religion With Desertion To Make It Sound Noble.

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.

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.

American Bankers Believe In The Personal Touch; The Teller Conveys A Sense That He Happens To Be There Accidentally And He Is Overjoyed At The Lucky Chance Of The Encounter.

It Seemed To Scobie That Life Was Immeasurably Long. Couldn’t The Test Of Man Have Been Carried Out In Fewer Years? Couldn’t We Have Committed Our First Major Sin At Seven, Have Ruined Ourselves For Love Or Hate At Ten, Have Clutched At Redemption On A Fifteen-year-old Deathbed?

Most Things Disappoint Till You Look Deeper.

I Couldn't Have Thought Of Her More. Even Vacancy Was Crowded With Her.

Perhaps The Comparison Is Closer To The Chinese Cook Who Leaves Hardly Any Part Of A Duck Unserved.

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.

Oh, She Doesn't Belong To Anybody Now,' He Said, And Suddenly I Saw Her For What She Was - A Piece Of Refuse Waiting To Be Cleared Away: If You Needed A Bit Of Hair You Could Take It, Or Trim Her Nails If Nail Trimmings Had Value To You. Like A Saint's Her Bones Could Be Divided Up - If Anybody Required Them. She Was Going To Be Burnt Soon, So Why Shouldn't Everybody Have What He Wanted First? What A Fool I Had Been During Three Years To Imagine That In Any Way I Had Possessed Her. We Are All Possessed By Nobody, Not Even By Ourselves.

People Change,' She Said 'oh, No They Don't. Look At Me. I've Never Changed. It's Like Those Sticks Of Rock: Bite It All The Way Down, You'll Still Read Brighton. That's Human Nature.

It Is The Storytellers Task To Elicit Sympathy And A Measure Of Understanding For Those Who Lie Outside The Boundaries Of State Approval.

So Much In Writing Depends On The Superficiality Of One's Days. One May Be Preoccupied With Shopping And Income Tax Returns And Chance 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.

They Haven't Left Us Much To Believe, Have They? — Even Disbelief. I Can't Believe In Anything Bigger Than A Home, Or Anything Vaguer Than A Human Being.

All Good Novelists Have Bad Memories.

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