Quote

The germ, wherever gathered, has ever been for me, the germ of a story, and most of the stories strained to shape under my hand have sprung from a single small seed, a seed as remote and windblown as a casual hint.

Henry James

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Henry James
Age: 73 †
Born: 1843
Born: January 1
Died: 1916
Died: January 1
Contributing Editor
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet Lawyer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Henricus James
Stories
Seeds
Hint
Ever
Shape
Germs
Shapes
Gathered
Single
Hints
Hand
Remote
Incubation
Small
Casual
Strained
Story
Seed
Germ
Hands
Wherever
Sprung

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She is written in a foreign tongue.
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I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.
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We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.
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To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.
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You must save what you can of your life you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
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She was a woman who, between courses, could be graceful with her elbows on the table.
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You are good for nothing unless you are clever.
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Her memory's your love. You want no other.
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..her smile, which was her pretty feature, was never so pretty as when her sprightly phrase had a scratch lurking in it.
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It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
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To live in the world of creation-to get into it and stay in it-to frequent it and haunt it...to think intently and fruitfully, to woo combinations and inspirations into being by a depth and continuity of attention and meditation-this is the only thing.
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If one is strong, one loves the more strongly.
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There are moods in which one feels the impulse to enter a tacit protest against too gross an appetite for pure aesthetics in this starving and sinning world. One turns half away, musingly, from certain beautiful useless things.
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The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.
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I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it.
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Americans will eat garbage provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup.
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Excellence does not require perfection.
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Deep experience is never peaceful.
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