Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better.
HENRY JAMESHer imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.
More Henry James Quotes
-
-
Don’t try so much to form your character – it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose.
HENRY JAMES -
It takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition.
HENRY JAMES -
Ideas are, in truth, forces. Infinite, too, is the power of personality. A union of the two always makes history.
HENRY JAMES -
Make the short story tremendously succinct – with a very short pulse or rhythm – and the closest selection of detail.
HENRY JAMES -
True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one’s self; but the point is not only to get out – you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
HENRY JAMES -
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.
HENRY JAMES -
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
HENRY JAMES -
What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?
HENRY JAMES -
I call people rich when they’re able to meet the requirements of their imagination.
HENRY JAMES -
If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
HENRY JAMES -
Love has nothing to do with good reasons.
HENRY JAMES -
Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.
HENRY JAMES -
And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
HENRY JAMES -
The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.
HENRY JAMES -
She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.
HENRY JAMES