Like many writers, Graham Greene developed some peculiar habits. For much of his life, he wrote little more than a page per day, frequently stopping to assess his output. Once he had reached 500 words, he would stop -- even if he was in the middle of a sentence.

[During his sixty-year career, Greene published twenty-six novels (in addition to short stories, plays, film scripts, memoirs, and travel books, plus a vast quantity of correspondence). In a letter to wife Vivien, he once shared the "terrifying thought" that five hundred words a day for another forty years would add up to seven million three hundred thousand words, "not allowing for leap years. Darling!! I should get a cramp!"]