Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing.
Graham Greene

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.
Graham Greene

Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance.
Graham Greene

Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
Graham Greene

Sentimentality - that's what we call the sentiment we don't share.
Graham Greene

Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
Graham Greene

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.
Graham Greene

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

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.
Graham Greene

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.
Graham Greene

The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.
Graham Greene

The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.
Graham Greene

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
Graham Greene

They are always saying God loves us. If that's love I'd rather have a bit of kindness.
Graham Greene

Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.
Graham Greene

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.
Graham Greene

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.
Graham Greene

When we are not sure, we are alive.
Graham Greene

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.
Graham Greene