Claims Quote by Ben Lerner

“No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, "Good food at…

— Lynne Truss

That is the mystery: Reading Henry James can yield prose that is contrary to James, yet inspired by him. Who can understand this?

— Joyce Carol Oates

Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty.

— Oscar Wilde

“An author's job isn't to just write books, but to give hope and inspiration to the lost.”

— Rowan K. Lake Jr

I had the idea in my twenties that a writer could immediately become the late Henry James. Henry James himself had to mature. Even…

— Cynthia Ozick

“Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist - in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to…

— Haruki Murakami

“No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist.”

— Haruki Murakami

“Writing novels allows the novelist to spend much of his time in a fictional world, which is really the only or at least the…

— Javier Marías

“It's not Jane Austen, it's not Henry James. But this writer, or writers, well, they're pretty damn good too.”

— Richard Curtis

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

— Neil Gaiman

“There is only one person who needs to be convinced that you're a writer. That would be you.”

— Tim Campbell

And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.

— Norman MacCaig