Quotes from The End of the Affair

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I hate you, God. I hate you as though you actually exist.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I measured love by the extent of my jealousy.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I can never think of you as a friend. You can do without a friend.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“You needn't be so scared. Love doesn't end. Just because we don't see each other...”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I'm tired and I'm sick to death of being without you.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“If I'm a bitch and a fake, is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“Indifference and pride look very much alike, and he probably thought I was proud.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“I couldn't have thought of her more. Even vacancy was crowded with her.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most. It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance 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.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“As long as one suffers one lives.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“The next best thing to talking to her is talking about her.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“If two people loved, they slept together; it was a mathematical formula, tested and proved by human experience.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“What happens if you drop all the things that make you I?”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

“How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.”
― Graham Greene, quote from The End of the Affair

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“However,” as Ed notes, “apart from any one Scriptural interpretation, vile, inhuman spirits do roam the earth today. And when commanded to speak, the spirits’ reply is a grave one: My name is Legion: We Are One. It is also true that these spirits possess overwhelming powers, and work with a ferocious rage, malice, and spite against mankind. Oddly, the only protection man can summon against these negative forces is mention of the name of God—though more particularly Jesus—and the presentation of blessed objects. Otherwise, nothing will stay these bizarre spirit entities.”
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“Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,' as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young. Don't drink on an empty stomach: the main point of the refreshment is the enhancement of food. Don't drink if you have the blues: it's a junk cure. Drink when you are in a good mood. Cheap booze is a false economy. It's not true that you shouldn't drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain. Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can't properly remember last night. (If you really don't remember, that's an even worse sign.) Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed—as are the grape and the grain—to enliven company. Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won't be easily available. Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop. It's much worse to see a woman drunk than a man: I don't know quite why this is true but it just is. Don't ever be responsible for it.”
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“Normally I give permission to take my daughter for a walk after only the building of a wall and a stone pathway.' He smiled. 'For future reference.'

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