“Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”

If you have work to do, don’t wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it.

The superiority of one man’s opinion over another’s is never so great as when the opinion is about a woman.

The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that illusion makes it appear to us for the time that we have lived another life – that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience.

An Englishman’s never so natural as when he’s holding his tongue.

Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.

She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.

If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

Things are always different from what they might be.

The main object of the novel is to represent life. . .

We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have.

Sorrow comes in great waves…but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us.

And remember this, that if you’ve been hated, you’ve also been loved.

Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.

Adjectives are the sugar of literature and adverbs the salt.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, for our consideration and application of these things, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games

I get on with all my exes, so there’s nothing I need to forget about. I don’t know – life is shorter than it seems.

The structure of my novels has nothing to do with the narrative mode of cinema. My novels would be very difficult to film without ruining them completely.

I should say nothing! I’m through with it! I hate to repeat myself all the time.

You are always in the world. Even in Vagabond. I am not on the road, I am not eating nothing.

There is nothing in the world so incomprehensible as the joke we do not see.

I’d been educated stupidly, I knew nothing about nothing, that’s part of being shy.

If you know nothing, it could be like an enemy in a way. I think that’s the way I felt when I was young.

I try to do nothing. I drink rosemary when I have a lot of work to do. People take coffee, they take speed, whatever. I take rosemary.