Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the differing approaches of novelists and journalists towards truth and storytelling.
Graham Greene suggests that novelists tend to seek deeper truths through their crafted narratives, while journalists, conversely, may sometimes prioritize fictionality in their storytelling or present information in a sensationalized manner. This distinction may cause novelists to feel a need to distance themselves from journalists, as they aspire to capture authentic human experiences rather than conform to the sometimes exaggerated realities presented in journalism.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a literary discussion, use this quote to illustrate the distinct missions of creative writers and reporters.
More from Graham Greene
All quotes →It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?
God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.
Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
Similar quotes
Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.
And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.
The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.
By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. _x000D_ Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone's back.
Nothing is forgotten in the processes of idealization. Reveries of idealization develop, not by letting oneself be taken in by memories, but by constantly dreaming the values of a being whom one would love. And that is the way a great dreamer dreams his double. His magnified double sustains him.