He could not cook, drive a car, or use a typewriter, so he was helpless alone. Greene seemed to require the mateyness of another person — his friend Michael Meyer, who traveled with him through the Pacific, or later in his life the priest Father Duran, who appears in Monsignor Quixote. Greene claimed to be manic depressive, sometimes suicidal, and lonely.

I should ask the green thumb next door what she recommends for my droopy daffodils.

Her bright ideas were relegated to tosh by her manager.

Barack Obama had become exasperated by the propensity of the party establishment to panic at every psephological blip.