Author: Henry James

Cites

• Henry James (1)
  • IN: The Ambassadors (1903) Novel, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It dosen't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"
    FROM: The Ambassadors--Strether, Lambert, (1903), Author, US

Cited by

• Geoff Dyer (1)
  • IN: Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (2010) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The deposed, the defeated, the disenchanted, the wounded, or even only the bored, have seemed to find there something that no other place could give.
    FROM: Italian Hours, (1909), Book, US
• de Kretser, Michelle (1)
  • IN: The Lost Dog (2007) Fiction, Australian
    EPIGRAPH: The whole of anything can never be told.
    FROM: Notebooks, (1947), Book, US
• Edward Carey (1)
  • IN: Lungdon (2015) Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: London is on the whole the most possible form of life.
    FROM: NULL, (1909), NULL, US
• David Lodge (1)
  • IN: Author, Author (2004) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art
    FROM: The Middle Years, (1893), Short story, UK
• Pete Hamill (1)
  • IN: Loving Women (1989) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Ah for another go, ah for a better chance!
    FROM: The Middle Years, (1893), Short story, US/England
• Gilbert Sorrentino (1)
  • IN: The Abyss of Human Illusion (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: He sat and stared at the sea, which appeared all surface and twinkle, far shallower than the spirit of man. It was the abyss of human illusion that was the real, the tideless deep.
    FROM: The Middle Years, (1893), Short Story, England/US
• James Baldwin (1)
  • IN: Another Country (1963) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: They strike one, above all, as giving no account of themselves in any terms already consecrated by human use; to this inarticulate state they probably form, collectively, the most unprecedented of monumnets; abysmal the mystery of what they think, what they feel, what they want, what they suppose themselves to be saying.
    FROM: Lady Barbarina The Siege of London an International Episode and Other Tales, (1922), Book, US/England
• St. Aubyn, Edward (1)
  • IN: A Clue to the Exit (2000) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Clearly you move still in the human maze -- but I like to think of you there; may it be long before you find the clue to the exit.
    FROM: to Hugh Walpole, (1912), Conversation, US/England
• Donald Westlake (1)
  • IN: The Ax (1997) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The old superstition about fiction being "wicked" has doubtless died out in England, but the spirit of it lingers in a certain oblique regard directed toward any story which does not more or less admit that it is only a joke. Even the most jocular novel feels in some degree the weight of the proscription that was formerly directed against literary levity: the jocularity does not always succeed in passing for orthodoxy. It is still expected, though perhaps people are ashamed to say it, that a production which is after all only a 'make-believe' (for what else is a 'story'?) shall be in some degree apologetic — shall renounce the pretension of attempting really to represent life. This, of course, any sensible, wide-awake story declines to do, for it quickly perceives that the tolerance granted to it on such a condition is only an attempt to stifle it disguised in the form of generosity. The old evangelical hostility to the novel, which was as explicit as it was narrow, and which regarded it as little less favourable to our immortal part than a stage-play, was in reality far less insulting. The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
    FROM: The Art of Fiction, (1888), Book, US/England
• Maggie Pouncey (1)
  • IN: Perfect Reader (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: He's my poet of poets - I know him almost by heart.
    FROM: The Aspern Papers, (1888), Novel, US/England
• Maureen Gibbon (1)
  • IN: Thief (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Things are always different from what they might be.
    FROM: The Portrait of a Lady, (1881), Novel, US
• Judith Kinghorn (1)
  • IN: The Memory of Lost Senses (2013) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Italy was mostly an emotion and the emotion naturally centred in Rome. Rome, before 1870, was seductive beyond resistance... shadows breathed and glowed, full of soft forms felt by lost senses.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US
• Elizabeth Evans (1)
  • IN: As Good As Dead (2015) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Our doubt is our passion.
    FROM: "The Middle Years", (1893), Short Story, US/England
• William Boyd (1)
  • IN: Any Human Heart (2002) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Never say you know the last word about any human heart.
    FROM: NULL, (None), NULL, US/England
• Jill Bialosky (1)
  • IN: The Prize (2015) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
    FROM: "The Middle Years", (1893), Short Story, US/England
• Henry James (1)
  • IN: The Ambassadors (1903) Novel, American
    EPIGRAPH: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It dosen't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"
    FROM: The Ambassadors--Strether, Lambert, (1903), Author, US
• Susan Rieger (1)
  • IN: The Heirs (2017) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: The real represents to my perception the things we cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another.
    FROM: The American, (1877), Novel, US
• Brandy Purdy (1)
  • IN: The Ripper’s Wife (2014) Historical Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: She was the most beautiful young lady I ever saw, and the most amiable… And she was the most innocent.
    FROM: Daisy Miller, (1878), Novel, US/England
• Anthony Quinn (1)
  • IN: Curtain Call (2015) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: “So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!”
    FROM: NULL, (1915), NULL, US/England
• Cynthia Ozick (1)
  • IN: Foreign Bodies (2010) Fiction, American
    EPIGRAPH: But there are two quite distinct things—given the wonderful place he’s in— that may have happened to him. One is that he may have got brutalized. The other is that he may have got refined.
    FROM: The Ambassadors, (1903), Novel, US