Henry James Writing Quotations

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

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.

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

If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.'

What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?

Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.

The deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer...No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind.

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

I have performed the necessary butchery. Here is the bleeding corpse.