“What happens to the author of a novel is rather like the pilot of a plane. The pilot needs to get the plane off the ground. It takes off with the help of the pilot. Once it is in the air, the pilot does virtually nothing. Once everything has started working, the characters begin to impose themselves on the author, who no longer controls them. They have a life of their own. The author has to go on writing. Sometimes he writes things which appear to have no raison d’être. Only at the end is the reason apparent. The author intervenes to allow the plane to land. It is time for the novel to end.”
[Father Leopoldo Durán, Graham Greene: Friend and Brother, trans. Euan Cameron (London, HarperCollins, 1994) as quoted in Richard Greene, Russian Roulette: The Life and Times of Graham Greene, Little, Brown, 2020).
Maria de Luca 