Henry James Quotes about Writing

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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.

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.

Henry James

Art, Writing, Mind

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

Henry James

Writing, Bleeding, Butchery

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.'

Henry James

Writing, People, Trying

"The Art of Fiction" (1884)

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

Henry James

Love, Writing, Literature

Henry James (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry James (Illustrated)”, p.11956, Delphi Classics

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

Henry James

Writing, Doe, Reason

Partial Portraits (1888) "Art of Fiction"

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

Henry James

Writing, Use

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

Henry James

Writing, Thinking, Evil

"The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction".

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.

Henry James

Country, Writing, Yield

Letter to Charles Eliot Norton, 16 Jan. 1871