Helena Corder

“The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.”
― Henry James

“The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it-this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education.”
― Henry James, The Art of Fiction

“The opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. Thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress.”
― Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare

“Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.”
― Samuel Johnson, Preface to Shakespeare