Graham Greene, the English writer best known for novels like The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American, wrote tens of thousands of personal letters before his death on April 3, 1991. Below is one, written to his mistress and culled from Graham Greene: A Life in Letters, about a sudden moment of inspiration:

To Catherine Walston

Tuesday, Sep. 30. [1947] 11 p.m.

Dear Catherine,

I believe I’ve got a book coming. I feel so excited that I spell out your name in full carefully sticking my tongue between my teeth to pronounce it right. The act of creation’s awfully odd & inexplicable like falling in love. A lock of hair touches one’s eyes in a plane with East Anglia under snow, & one is in love…. Tonight I had a solitary, good dinner where I usually go with My Girl & afterwards felt vaguely restless (not sexually, just restless). So I walked to the Cafe Royal & sat & read The Aran Islands & drank beer till about 10 & then I still felt restless, so I walked all up Piccadilly & back, went back in a gent’s in Brick Street, & suddenly in the gent’s, I saw the three characters, the beginning, the middle & the end, & in some ways all the ideas I had – the first sentence of the thriller about the dead Harry who wasn’t dead, the risen-from-the-dead story, & the one the other day in the train – all seem to come together. I hope to God it lasts – they don’t always. I want to begin the next book with you in Ireland – if possible at Achill, but on Aran or Innishboffin or the Galway hotel or anywhere.

Now I shall go to bed with lots of aspirin, but I shan’t sleep.

Love,

Graham

Photo courtesy damon.garrett.