Art & Creativity Quote by Graham Greene

Greene’s jab lands because it flips the job descriptions we think we recognize. The novelist, supposedly the professional maker of lies, becomes the truth-teller; the journalist, supposedly bound to facts, becomes the fabulist. It’s a neat inversion with an acidic aftertaste, and it’s classic Greene: Catholic-tinged moral seriousness delivered through dry, insinuating humor.

The “petty reason” opener is doing sly work. He downplays the provocation as mere snobbery or professional turf-warring, then uses that false modesty to sharpen the blade. By the time he says journalists “try to write fiction,” the insult feels almost incidental, which makes it sting more. The key word is “try”: Greene isn’t claiming journalists are talented novelists, he’s accusing them of narrative ambition without the novelist’s honesty about invention. Journalism, in his view, is tempted to sand down reality into something legible, dramatic, and marketable: heroes and villains, clean arcs, punchy morals. That’s fiction’s machinery wearing a “just the facts” trench coat.

Context matters: Greene worked in and around journalism, espionage, and propaganda-adjacent worlds, and he lived through decades when official narratives were aggressively manufactured. He knew how institutions launder “truth” into story. So the line isn’t just writers bickering; it’s a warning about modern information culture, where “objectivity” can become a style rather than a discipline.

The subtext is a defense of the novel as a tool for moral and psychological accuracy. Facts can be correct and still deceptive; invention can be fabricated and still true. Greene is betting on that uncomfortable distinction.