Quote #50

The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what he may attempt as an executant - no limit to his possible experiments, efforts, discoveries, successes.

More from Henry James

  1. The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
  2. Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web, of the finest silken thread…
  3. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
  4. The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of …
  5. Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
  6. What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
  7. So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!
  8. We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnee; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Natu…

All Henry James quotes