James Wood > Quotes

“All nature is but art unknown to thee. / All chance, direction which thou canst not see. / All discord, harmony not understood; / All partial evil, universal good. Pope.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“We must proceed on the assumption that almost all prose popularly acclaimed as beautiful ('she writes like an angel') is nothing of the sort, that almost every novelist will at some point be baselessly acclaimed for writing 'beautifully' as almost all flowers are at some point acclaimed for smelling nice.”
― James Wood

“But this will be unceasingly difficult: for the writer has to act as if the available novelistic methods are continuously about to turn into mere convention and so has to try to outwit that inevitable aging. Chekhov's challenge--'Ibsen just doesn't know life. In life it simply isn't like that'--is as radical now as it was a century ago, because forms must continually be broken. The true writer that free servant of life, is one who must always be acting as if life were a category beyond anything the novel had yet grasped; as if life itself were always on the verge of becoming conventional.”
― James Wood, How Fiction Works [Deckle Edge] Reprint edition

“Acta exteriora indicant interiora secreta—Outward acts betray the secret intention. L. Max.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“En büyük müzisyenler çocuktu; çocuksu, sorumsuz, garip biçimde masum kalıyorlardı. Genç ölüyorlar, kendilerini kurban ediyorlar, sağlıklarını, vücutlarını mahvediyorlardı; biz hayatlarımızı yaşamaya devam edebilelim diye, hayatımız dediğimiz uzun, makul, burjuva uykusundan uyanmadan biteviye banka hesaplarımız ve hisselerimizle, emeklilik fonlarımızla, yemek davetlerimiz, saç kesimlerimiz ve düzenli diş doktoru randevularımızla ilgilenebilelim diye. Rock müziği buna karşıydı. O aklın uykusuydu.”
― James Wood, Upstate (Contemporánea nº 39)

“Friends are proved by adversity.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A consistent man believes in destiny, a capricious man in chance. Disraeli.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A fool may sometimes have talent, but he never has judgment. La Roche.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“I think that novels tend to fail not when the characters are not vivid or deep enough, but when the novel in question has failed to teach us how to adapt to its conventions, has failed to manage a specific hunger for its own characters, its own reality level.”
― James Wood, How Fiction Works [Deckle Edge] Reprint edition

“Abeunt studia in mores—Pursuits assiduously prosecuted become habits.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A l'œuvre on connaît l'artisan—By the work one knows the workman. La Font.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“Ambos oder Hammer—One must be either anvil or hammer. Ger. Pr.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A man's fate is his own temper. Disraeli. A man's friends belong no more to him than 60he to them. Schopenhauer.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool. Bulwer.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“A man of intellect without energy added to it is a failure. Chamfort.”
― James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources

“Literature makes us better noticers of life; we get to practice on life itself; which in turn makes us better readers of detail in literature; which in turn makes us better readers of life. And so on and on. You have only to teach literature to realize that most young readers are poor noticers. I know from my own old books, wantonly annotated twenty years ago when I was a student, that I routinely un- derlined for approval details and images and metaphors that strike me now as common- place, while serenely missing things that now seem wonderful. We grow, as readers, and twenty-year-olds are relative virgins. They have not yet read enough literature to be taught by it how to read it.”
― James Wood, How Fiction Works [Deckle Edge] Reprint edition