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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.

-Graham Greene

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Those Who Marry God

Graham Greene

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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.

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Life Would Go Out In A 'fraction Of A Second' (that Was The Phrase), But All Night He Had Been Realizing That Time Depends On Clocks And The Passage Of Light. There Were No Clocks And The Light Wouldn't Change. Nobody Really Knew How Long A Second Of Pain Could Be. It Might Last A Whole Purgatory--or For Ever.

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

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

Sooner Or Later

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

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

Great Inspirational

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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

Love Taught Me That Your Honour Did But Jest.

Cruel Men Cry Easily At The Cinema.

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

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

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

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

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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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

People Who Like Quotes Love Meaningless Generalizations

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

Black And White

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.

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

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.

We Mustn't Complain Too Much Of Being Comedians - It's An Honorable Profession. If Only We Could Be Good Ones The World Might Gain At Least A Sense Of Style. We Have Failed - That's All. We Are Bad Comedians, We Aren't Bad Men.

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

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

Good Intentions

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

We Forget Very Easily What Gives Us Pain.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

Like Some Wines Our Love Could Neither Mature Nor Travel.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

There's A Virtue In Slowness, Which We Have Lost

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

Never Presume Yours Is A Better Morality.

A Man Kept His Character Even When He Was Insane.

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

She Mixes Religion With Desertion To Make It Sound Noble.

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.

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.

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.

Doing Nothing, Badly.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

All The Emotions Have Something In Common. People Are Quite Aware Of The Sorrow There Always Is In Lust, But They Are Not So Aware Of The Lust There Is In Sorrow.

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.

I Measured Love By The Extent Of My Jealousy.

Would The World Be In The Mess It Is If We Were Loyal To Love And Not To Countries?

He Felt The Loyalty We Feel To Unhappiness - The Sense That Is Where We Really Belong.

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?

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

Congratulations

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Refused To Believe That Love Could Take Any Other Form Than Mine: I Measured Love By The Extent Of My Jealousy, And By That Standard Of Course She Could Not Love Me At All.

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.

For A Good Man Fame Is Always A Problem.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Sooner Or Later

You Cannot Love Without Intuition.

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

It Is Always Of Interest To Know What Strikes Another Human Being As Remarkable.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 Is A Kind Of Insanity

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

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?

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 . . .

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.

So Much Of Life [is] A Putting-off Of Unhappiness For Another Time. Nothing [is] Ever Lost By Delay.

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.

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

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

All Good Novelists Have Bad Memories. What You Remember Comes Out As Journalism; What You Forget Goes Into The Compost Of The Imagination.

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

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.

I Can Never Think Of You As A Friend. You Can Do Without A Friend.

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.

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.

Destruction After All Is A Form Of Creation.

Self-expression Is A Hard And Selfish Thing. It Eats Everything, Even The Self. At The End You Find You Haven't Even Got A Self To Express.

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.

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

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Russell T Davies

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