Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers have a unique ability to observe and draw inspiration from the world around them.
This quote by Graham Greene emphasizes the dual role of a writer as both a participant and an observer in social settings. Writers can take in details and intricacies of human behavior and conversations, which enhances their craft, turning even the mundane experiences into valuable material for storytelling.
Themes
WritingObservationCreativityStoriesExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, this quote can inspire participants to find inspiration in their daily lives.
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?
Graham GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
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.
Graham GreeneRead
Similar quotes
Comics are expensive. Don’t make me resent the money I spend buying yours. Every single moment in your script must either move the story along or demonstrate something important about the characters — preferably both — and every panel that does neither is a sloppy waste of space.
Mark WaidRead
Hollywood wants to go for the flash, because that's what a lot of them think science fiction is.
Octavia E. ButlerRead
It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.
Amy TanRead
So, for instance, if you came to me, I'd ask, 'Do you want to write? Do you want to improvise? Why do you want to play this instrument? What do you want to do?'
Ornette ColemanRead
A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.
Maya LinRead
Listen to the great guitarists of the Fifties. They didn't do that nasty sort of industrial distortion. They played musical compositions as solos - Scotty Moore, Cliff Gallup, Django Reinhardt. There wasn't a bad note in any of those solos. I listened to that and stayed with those rules.
Jeff BeckRead