Childhood was the germ of all mistrust. You were cruelly joked upon, and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.

— Graham Greene

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.

— Graham Greene

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.

— Graham Greene

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent forever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the watching her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.

— Graham Greene

Death was far more certain than God.

— Graham Greene

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever. 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 daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. 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.

— Graham Greene

Despair is the price one pays for setting himself an impossible aim.

— Graham Greene

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim

— Graham Greene

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 always carries in his heart this capacity for damnation.

— Graham Greene

Did you find anything special?' Blackie asked. T. nodded. 'Come over here,' he said, 'and look.' Out of both pockets he drew bundles of pound notes. 'Old Misery's savings,' he said. 'Mike ripped out the mattress, but he missed them.'' What are you going to do? Share them?'' We aren't thieves,' T. said. 'Nobody's going to steal anything from this house. I kept these for you and me - a celebration.' He knelt down on the floor and counted them out - there were seventy in all. 'We'll burn them,' he said, 'one by one,' and taking it in turns they held a note upwards and lit the top corner, so that the flame burnt slowly towards their fingers. The gray ash floated above them and fell on their heads like age. 'I'd like to see Old Misery's face when we are through,' T. said.' You hate him a lot?' Blackie asked.' Of course, I don't hate him,' T. said. 'There'd be no fun if I hated him.' The last burning note illuminated his brooding face. 'All this hate and love,' he said, 'it's soft, it's hooey. There are only things, Blackie,' and he looked round the room crowded with the unfamiliar shadows of half things, broken things, former things. 'I'll race you home, Blackie,' he said. ("The Destructors")

— Graham Greene