During a podcast I subscribe to, covering a publicity circuit interview for “The Trump Tapes”, Bob Woodward referenced a quotation he’s used before.
I think it’s a line with merit.
The text gets varied a fair bit by other commentators without material change to the context. I have been looking for the original quotation without success, which maybe is just an indictment on my google fu.
Undaunted, I sent a message to the Graham Greene Birthplace Trust asking if they could assist and got a very prompt, pithy and phlegmatic response: “Sorry can’t”. [shrug]
So I turn to the teeming millions asking whether they might be able to identify the original
Or has Bob Woodward taken some poetic license?
It it possible that only the first quote is Greene’s ?
“In this world, we can be fairly, and often unfairly, ground into dust,” he said, quoting author Graham Greene. “Don’t become an enemy with the other side, even if you don’t agree. They have a case and you must listen.”
Ie, up to the period - and the bit after is his own (Woodward’s), or someone else ?
(Although google doesn’t find anything for that either !)
You might be right, but every secondary reference I have found attributes the “They have a case” quote to Greene but nobody else seems to have found it independently.
In a podcast with The New Yorker Woodward himself seems to fully credit Greene with the observation.
Maybe it was spoken in conversation between them rather than in a published work?