Грэм Грин цитаты

страница 6

„В отношениях между людьми нежность и ложь стоят тысячи правд.“

„Хотелось бы, чтобы у вас было несколько плохих мотивов, вы могли бы немного больше понять людей.“

„Покажите мне счастливого человека, и я покажу вам либо самовлюблённость, эгоизм и злобу, либо полнейшую духовную слепоту.“

„Природа ставит нам нашу собственную глупость в качестве западни.“

„О, я не беркелеец. Я верю, что моя спина против этой стены. Я верю, что там есть стен пистолет.“

„Ересь — всего лишь другое название свободы мысли.“

„Следующая лучшая вещь для разговора с ней - это говорить о ней.“

„Мы не выбираем наши проблемы.“

„Существует точка невозврата, не замеченная в то время, в большинстве жизней.“

„Так всегда и бывает: когда вы убегаете в пустыню, у вас кричит тишина.“

„У каждого из нас есть истинный возраст, не меняющийся с годами.“

„Мир состоит не из чёрного и белого, а, скорее, из черного и серого.“

„Несчастье, как и набожность, может войти в привычку.“

„Слава — самое сильное возбуждающее средство.“

„Любовь выдумали трубадуры в XI веке.“

„Для актёра успех — всего лишь отсроченный провал.“

„[О характере Пинки] Слово «убийство» передало ему не больше, чем слова «шкатулка», «воротник», «жираф».“

„В медлительности есть достоинство, которое мы потеряли“

„... это были мелочи, которые сбили вас с толку.“

„Пока кто-то счастлив, можно терпеть любую дисциплину: несчастье разрушает привычки работы.“

“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 clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”

“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. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.”

“[Priest at Hale's cremation] "…our brother is at this moment reabsorbed in the universal spirit."”

“Reality in our century is not something to be faced.”

“Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism … is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politique…. Catholics and communists have commited 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…if you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?”

“Can you hate something you don't believe in? And yet he called himself a free-thinker. What an impossible paradox, to be free and to be so obsessed.”

“What right had I to value her less than the bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist, in terms of quantity, and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again.”

“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.”

“Cynicism is cheap—you can buy it at any Monoprix store—it’s built into all poor-quality goods.”

“I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change 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. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book – the unconscious worked on it instead…”

“[About Pinkie's inability to empathise] The imagination hadn't awoken. That was his strength. He couldn't see through other people's eyes, or feel with their nerves. Only the music made him uneasy.”

“It is the story-teller's task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.”

“Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.”