Graham Greene
Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene OM CH, better known by his pen name Graham Greene, was an English novelist and author regarded by some as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers. He was shortlisted, in 1967, for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Through 67 years of writings, which included over 25 novels, he...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 October 1904
We remember the details of our story, we do not invent them.
Love taught me that your honour did but jest.
So much of life [is] a putting-off of unhappiness for another time. Nothing [is] ever lost by delay.
The world doesn't make any heroes anymore.
So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.
One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.
No building was safe from the furniture, the pictures, the human beings that it would presently contain.
I write about situations that are common, universal might be more correct, in which my characters are involved and from which only faith can redeem them, though often the actual manner of the redemption is not immediately clear. They sin, but there is no limit to God's mercy and because this is important, there is a difference between not confessing in fact, and the complacent and the pious may not realize it.
It's a pity people pick and choose what they learn from the Bible.
Had Shakespeare listened to the news of Duncans death in a tavern or heard the knocking on his own bedroom door after he had finished the writing of Macbeth?
Self-expression is a hard and selfish thing. It eats everything, even the self. At the end you find you haven't even got a self to express.
A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.
If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.
Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.