The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt… — Henry James · Skopia

← Back to quotes

Essay · Magazine

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

1884

★ 1.1

Other tags relating to this quote

Topic

Purpose of literature Novels

Medium

Time

Person

Provenance

Current citation

James, Henry. "The Art of Fiction." The Portable Henry James. Penguin Classics, 2003.

Original citation

James, Henry. "The Art of Fiction." Longman's Magazine. London: C. J. Longman, 4 Sept. 1884.

Related quotes

Other quotes that share a subject, a time, or a voice with this one.

The whole purpose of literature... Is the notation of the heart. Style is but the faintly contemptible vessel in which the bitter liquid is recommended to the world.

Thornton Wilder

The Bridge on San Luis Rey · 1927

Another quote aboutTopic·Purpose of literature

The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it... If you do manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first.

Flannery O'Connor

1956

Another quote aboutTopic·Novels

You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that.

1986

Another quote aboutTopic·Novels

Sorrow comes in great waves—no one can know that better than you—but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.

1883

Another quote byPerson·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.

1884

Another quote byPerson·Henry James