The End of the Affair

by Graham Greene

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.

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.

There was never any question in those days of who wanted whom—we were together in desire.

Looking at her over my whisky I thought how odd it was that I felt no desire for her at all. It was as if quite suddenly after all the promiscuous years I had grown up. My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust for ever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love.

I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal Devil.

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.

Do this and I’ll believe. But that wasn’t enough. It doesn’t hurt to believe. So I said, I love him and I’ll do anything if you’ll make him alive, I said very slowly, I’ll give him up for ever, only let him be alive with a chance, and I pressed and pressed and I could feel the skin break, and I said, People can love without seeing each other, can’t they, they love You all their lives without seeing You, and then he came in at the door, and he was alive, and I thought now the agony of being without him starts, and I wished he was safely back dead again under the door.

I rang off. At first I was happy, and then I was miserable again. I didn’t know where he was. We were not in touch. In the same desert, seeking the same water-holes perhaps, but out of sight, always alone. For it wouldn’t be a desert if we were together. I said to God, ‘So that’s it. I begin to believe in you, and if I believe in you I shall hate you.

I don’t fear poverty. Sometimes it’s easier to cut your coat to fit the cloth than lie on the bed you’ve made.

If you don’t see misery you don’t believe in it. You can give anyone pain from a distance.