The Comedians

by Graham Greene

There is a point of no return unremarked at the time in most lives.

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

suppose those of us who spend a large part of our lives in dissembling, whether to a woman, to a partner, even to our own selves, begin to smell each other out.

If a husband is notoriously blind to infidelity, I suppose a lover has the opposite fault – he sees it everywhere.

‘Le remède au chaos N’est pas dans ce chaos.’

The cure for chaos is not in chaos.

The more unstable life is the less one likes the small details to alter.

For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience – the rest is observation – but I think it is equally true of us all.

‘You really are a son of mine,’ she said. ‘What part are you playing now?’

unreason can be more terrifying than reason.

Haiti was not an exception in a sane world: it was a small slice of everyday taken at random. Baron Samedi walked in all our graveyards.

The noise of the rain silenced the drums, and I felt as lonely as a man in a strange hotel after a friend’s funeral.

My mother had taken a black lover, she had been involved, but somewhere years ago I had forgotten how to be involved in anything. Somehow somewhere I had lost completely the capacity to be concerned.

I flung myself into pleasure like a suicide on to a pavement.

Darling, don’t you see you are inventing us?’

The Church condemns violence, but it condemns indifference more harshly. Violence can be the expression of love, indifference never. One is an imperfection of charity, the other the perfection of egoism.

I would rather be wrong with St Thomas than right with the cold and the craven.

Coloured people get killed more easily than Anglo-Saxons.

But Communism, my friend, is more than Marxism, just as Catholicism – remember I was born a Catholic too – is more than the Roman Curia. There is a mystique as well as a politique.

Catholics and 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.

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?’