They had been corrupted by money, and he had been corrupted by sentiment. Sentiment was the more dangerous, because you couldn’t name its price. A man open to bribes was to be relied upon below a certain figure, but sentiment might uncoil in the heart at a name, a photograph, even a smell remembered.
Graham GreeneOh, I’m not a Berkeleian. I believe my back’s against this wall. I believe there’s a sten gun over there.
Graham GreeneA 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 GreeneLife would go out in a 'fraction of a second' (that was the phrase), but all night he had been realizing that time depends on clocks and the passage of light. There were no clocks and the light wouldn't change. Nobody really knew how long a second of pain could be. It might last a whole purgatory--or for ever.
Graham Greene