Henry James Quotes

32 quotes by 30 authors

Henry James once defined life as that predicament which precedes death, and certainly nobody owes you a debt of honor or gratitude for getting him… — Clarence Budington Kelland
Herman Melville is not comforting. Emily Dickinson isnâ€™t either. Maybe their work is too hungry for comfort, or just too vivid for comfort. But Henry… — Susan Howe
I write longer sentences than most of the others, maybe because I probably like Henry James more than they do. — Peter Straub
Henry James seems most entirely in his element, doing that is to say what everything favors his doing, when it is a question of recollection.… — Virginia Woolf
I can manage a prose format as long as I keep closer to Laurence Sterne than to Henry James. — David Antin
Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words. — Edward Abbey
You canâ€™t learn to write in college. Itâ€™s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you doâ€”and… — Ray Bradbury
The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender — Philip Guedalla
I am re-reading Henry James as a change from history. I began with Daisy Miller, and I've just finished Washington Square. What a brilliant, painful… — Antonia Fraser
While reading writers of great formulatory power â€” Henry James, Santayana, Proust â€” I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to… — Joseph Epstein
And it's impossible for me to read Henry James. — Norman MacCaig
Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth… — Robert Adams
The women in my life have all been librarians, English teachers, or booksellers. If they couldn't speak pidgin Tolstoy, articulate Henry James, or give me… — Ray Bradbury
If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a… — Adam Haslett
If Henry James were still with us, he'd not only approve of Paris, He Said, he could have written it himself, though without his serpentine… — Rosellen Brown
Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation he wrote, in pain, gave all his life… — Sylvia Plath
As a Nobel Prize winner I cannot but regret that the award was never given to Mark Twain, nor to Henry James, speaking only of… — Ernest Hemingway
I read everything I could find in English - Twain, Henry James, Hemingway, really everything. And then after a while I started writing shorter pieces… — Aleksandar Hemon
The distinction between literary and genre fiction is stupid and pernicious. It dates back to a feud between Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James. James… — George R. R. Martin
Well, well, Henry James is pretty good, though he is of the nineteenth century, and that glaringly. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Who Wrote These Henry James Quotes

30 authors contributed a total of 32 Henry James Quotes, led by these top contributors: