Quotes from Brighton Rock

Graham Greene ·  269 pages

Rating: (17.5K votes)


“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


About the author

Graham Greene
Born place: in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, The United Kingdom
Born date October 2, 1904
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Being comfortable can hurt your creative entrepreneurial spirit.”
― Blake Mycoskie, quote from Start Something That Matters


“Mia: Where do their other things go? Like mobile phones and all the music on ipods? I imagine mountains of phones. Songs forgotten in clouds.”
― A.J. Betts, quote from Zac and Mia


“Just remember you have to bear my choice with the same grace and even tempered temerity I’ve shown with yours. (Shahara)
Good. I get to whine and bitch. Can’t wait. (Syn)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Born of Fire


“That's my conscience. We all have one. Mine never lets me settle for second best. There's no place in life for losers.”
― quote from Elena Vanishing


“Another lesson is that smart professionals might give an instruction to a program based on a sensible-seeming and normally sound assumption (e.g. that trading volume is a good measure of market liquidity), and that this can produce catastrophic results when the program continues to act on the instruction with iron-clad logical consistency even in the unanticipated situation where the assumption turns out to be invalid. The algorithm just does what it does; and unless it is a very special kind of algorithm, it does not care that we clasp our heads and gasp in dumbstruck horror at the absurd inappropriateness of its actions. This is a theme that we will encounter again.”
― Nick Bostrom, quote from Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies


Interesting books

Roots: The Saga of an American Family
(128.1K)
Roots: The Saga of a...
by Alex Haley
A Clash of Kings
(647.2K)
A Clash of Kings
by George R.R. Martin
Island of the Blue Dolphins
(254.6K)
Island of the Blue D...
by Scott O'Dell
Stranger in a Strange Land
(240K)
Stranger in a Strang...
by Robert A. Heinlein
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(216K)
For Whom the Bell To...
by Ernest Hemingway
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes
(31.2K)
The Complete Calvin...
by Bill Watterson

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.