He had in those days imagined himself capable of extraordinary heroisms and endurances which would make the girl he loved forget the awkward hands and the spotty chin of adolescence. Everything had seemed possible. One could laugh at daydreams, but so long as you had the capacity to daydream there was a chance that you might develop some of the qualities of which you dreamed. It was like the religious discipline: words however emptily repeated can in time form a habit, a kind of unnoticed sediment at the bottom of the mind, until one day to your own surprise you find yourself acting on the belief you thought you didn't believe in.

Writing style and themes
The literary style of Graham Greene was described by Evelyn Waugh in Commonweal as "not a specifically literary style at all. The next two books The Name of Action (1930) and Rumour at Nightfall (1932) were unsuccessful; and he later disowned them. He married Vivien in 1927; and they had two children Lucy Caroline (b.

Several works such as The Confidential Agent The Third Man The Quiet American Our Man in Havana and The Human Factor also show an avid interest in the workings of international politics and espionage. " Greene never received the Nobel Prize in Literature though he finiGraham Greened runner-up to Ivo Andrić in 1961. Greene suffered from bipolar disorder which had a profound effect on his writing and personal life.