Excerpts from Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair"

This book is one of those books that ceases to be words on a page and instead takes up residence in the Byzantine corridors of my soul. Whether by chance or destiny, these pathways curve and loop unexpectedly, causing even the most ardent curiousity-seeker to give up and seek more rewarding surroundings. I sympathize. If I could join the exodus, I would. Instead, I have rooms decorated tastefully and singularly devoted to objects and ideas that suit me. Never let it be said that I was ever afraid to love unloved things. Maybe that's why my soul is my own and nobody elses.

As I was thinking these thoughts, I ran across a passage that eeirly echoed my own:

"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 no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity."

Here are some other choice quotes:

"I would have liked to have left that past time alone, for as I write of 1939 I feel all my hatred returning. Hatred seems to operate the same glands as love: it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?"

"It occured to me with amazement that for ten minutes I had not thought of Sarah or of my jealousy; I had become nearly human enough to think of another person's trouble."

"I wanted to cry unobserved, and I went to the National Portrait Gallery, but it was the students' day-- there were too many people, so I went back to Maiden Lane and into the church that's always too dark to look at your neighbour. I sat there. It was quite empty except for me and for a little man who came in and prayed quietly in a pew behind. I remembered the first time I had been in one of those churches and how I had hated it. I didn't pray. I had prayed once too often. I said to God, as I might have said to my father, if I could ever have remembered having one, Dear God, I'm tired."

"I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone for ever."