“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“It's a good world if you don't weaken.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“This was hell then; it wasn't anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“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.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“She had an immense store of trivial memories and when she wasn't living in the future she was living in the past. As for the present - she got through that as quickly as she could, running away from things, running towards things, so that her voice was always a little breathless, her heart pounding at an escape or an expectation.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“It didn't matter anyway...he wasn't made for peace, he couldn't believe in it. Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“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.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“He looked with horror round the room: nobody could say he hadn't done right to get away from this, to commit any crime... When the man opened his mouth he heard his father speaking, that figure in the corner was his mother: he bargained for his sister and felt no desire... He turned to Rose, 'I'm off,' and felt the faintest tinge of pity for goodness which couldn't murder to escape.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“Don't you believe it. I'll tell you what life is. It's gaol, it's not knowing where to get some money. Worms and cataract, cancer. You hear 'em shrieking from the upper windows- children being born. It's dying slowly.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“He put his mouth on her and kissed her on the cheek; he was afraid of the mouth-thoughts travel too easily from lip to lip.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape--anywhere--for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“She wasn’t religious. She didn’t believe in heaven or hell, only in ghosts, Ouija boards, tables which rapped and little inept voices speaking plaintively of flowers”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“You talk too easily,’ the Boy said.
‘Talk?’ Mr Prewitt said. ‘I could shake the world. Let them put me in the dock if they like. I’ll give them—revelation. I’ve sunk so deep I carry—’ he was shaken by an enormous windy self-esteem—he hiccupped twice—‘the secrets of the sewer.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“She got up and he saw the skin of her thigh for a moment above the artificial silk, and a prick of sexual desire disturbed him like a sickness. That was what happened to a man in the end: the stuffy room, the wakeful children, the Saturday night movements from the other bed. Was there no escape––anywhere––for anyone? It was worth murdering a world.”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“...trying to extricate from the long day the grain of pleasure”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“Life was a series of complicated tactical exercises, as complicated as the alignments at Waterloo, thought out on a brass bedstead among the crumbs of sausage roll. [p107]”
― Graham Greene, quote from Brighton Rock
“In the midst of life we are in death --one can never tell what may happen.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, quote from Mrs Craddock
“There was a peal of laughter from the girls. Then, before anyone could say a word, the line was seen to move a fraction. A bite at last! The sage yanked in for all he was worth. The rod crashed into a protruding rock and broke clean in two. The”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from The Debt of Tears
“I'd never describe even myself as safe when I go into the Magical Realms; no one's safe in there, not even if they're armed and armored with every protective charm on the planet. The place has this habit of changing the rules and pulling the rug from under your feet...."
"Is it carpeted, then?" asked Tharaman.
"What?"
"The Magical Realms, are they carpeted? It's just that you mentioned pulling a rug from somewhere and I just wondered if perhaps..."
"I think it's a figure of speech, my dear," said Krisafitsa. "I do believe it means to be taken by surprise when you least expect it."
"Oh, I see....Odd expression...”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“The River Mogami has drowned
Far and deep
Beneath its surging waves
The flaming sun of summer”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Backroads to Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal
“Frederick?
Had she really spoken? Certainly she'd tried, but her voice had failed to materialize and all she heard was the sound of her nightgown ripping as Frederick pulled it over her head and threw it aside.
He was kneeling now between her ankles, pushing at her, forcing her knees apart and then her arms until she was entirely splayed on the bed beneath him.
Nothing was said. Not a word.
Ede felt his hand between her legs, forcing the way for the rest of him. Stop, she wanted to tell him. Stop. I don't understand what you're doing. But nothing - still nothing was said.
He seemed to be raging inside her, moving his hips in a circular fashion, all the weight of his upper body help above her, resting on his arms, his hands pushing down into the mattress.
Stop! But he didn't.
Don't! But he did.
Nothing. Not one word.
The only sound he made was a choking noise in his throat at the end, as tough he might be going to strangle. But when he rolled away from her onto his back, she felt the shudder of his first free breath and she heard him sigh. It was over. Tonight. It was done.
Ede could not bare the thought of seeing him, or of being seen. Still without speaking, she rose from the bed and through the dark, found her way to the bathroom. She had brought the torn nightgown wit her, but when she turned on the light and saw it, she threw it down in the corner. Ruined. Spoiled. Everything.
When at last, she returned to the bed, Fredrick was sound asleep beneath the covers - and nothing - nothing - nothing was said.”
― Timothy Findley, quote from The Piano Man's Daughter
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