11 Henry James Quotes on Writing

Henry James quotes on writing

3. The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

7. It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

19. I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

32. The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.

38. I'm glad you like adverbs - I adore them; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

48. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.

49. The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

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.

52. 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 feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it - this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience, and experience only,' I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!'

68. The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

70. The ever importunate murmur, 'Dramatize it, dramatize it!'