Brighton Rock Quotes

“You cannot conceive, nor can I, of the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“A brain was only capable of what it could conceive, and it couldn't conceive what it had never experienced”
― Graham Greene, 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, 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, Brighton Rock

“I know one thing you don't. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. They didn't teach you that at school.'
Rose didn't answer; the woman was quite right: the two words meant nothing to her. Their taste was extinguished by stronger foods--Good and Evil.”
― Graham Greene, 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, Brighton Rock

“It's a good world if you don't weaken.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“This was hell then; it wasn't anything to worry about: it was just his own familiar room.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“He was like a child with haemophilia: every contact drew blood.”
― Graham Greene, 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, Brighton Rock

“But you do believe, don’t you," Rose implored him, "you think it’s true?"
"Of course it’s true," the Boy said. "What else could there be?" he went scornfully on. "Why," he said, "it’s the only thing that fits. These atheists, they don’t know nothing. Of course there’s Hell. Flames and damnation," he said with his eyes on the dark shifting water and the lightning and the lamps going out above the black struts of the Palace Pier, "torments."
"And Heaven too," Rose said with anxiety, while the rain fell interminably on.
"Oh, maybe," the Boy said, "maybe.”
― Graham Greene, 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, 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, Brighton Rock

“Heaven was a word: hell was something he could trust.”
― Graham Greene, 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, 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, Brighton Rock

“He laughed again: the horror of the world lay like infection in his throat.”
― Graham Greene, 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, Brighton Rock

“From behind he looked younger than he was in his dark thin ready-made suit a little too big for him at the hips, but when you met him face to face he looked older, the slatey eyes were touched with the annihilating eternity from which he had come and to which he went.”
― Graham Greene, 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, 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, Brighton Rock

“He stumbled on an old boot and put his hand on the stones to save himself: they had all the cold of the sea and had never been warmed by sun under these pillars.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“She loved him whatever that meant but love was not an eternal thing like hatred and disgust.”
― Graham Greene, 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, Brighton Rock

“You can’t conceive, my child, nor can I or anyone the … appalling … strangeness of the mercy of God.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“...trying to extricate from the long day the grain of pleasure”
― Graham Greene, 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.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock

“He looked as if he needed feeding up, as if he was wasted with passions he had never had the courage to express.”
― Graham Greene, 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, Brighton Rock

“There was poison in his veins, though he grinned and bore it. He had been insulted. He was going to show the world.”
― Graham Greene, Brighton Rock