I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it. – Henry James
Experience is never limited, and it is never complete it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue. – Henry James
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
People talk about the conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if youre nice to the second housemaid. – Henry James
I am sorry.. Can only say time accelerated and skidded…. When my correspondents reproach me for tardiness, I can only say that I give as much attention to a letter as I do to anything I write, and I work at least six and sometimes sixteen hours a day. – William S. Burroughs, letter to Mother and Dad, 1959