Quotes from James Joyce

To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art.

I've been working hard on [Ulysses] all day, said Joyce. Does that mean that you have written a great deal? I said. Two sentences, said Joyce. I looked sideways but Joyce was not smiling. I thought of [French novelist Gustave] Flaubert. You've been seeking the mot juste? I said. No, said Joyce. I have the words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.

Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?

A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.

He asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her in that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her hair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show off the light ones. Distant Music he would call the picture if he were a painter.

Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that is the only way of insuring one's immortality.

And you'll miss me more as the narrowing weeks wing by. Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.

When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.

The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity.

It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.

We were always loyal to lost causes...Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. ~ Professor MacHugh

There is not past, no future; everything flows in an eternal present.

The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. NON SERVIAM!

A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.

I have left my book, I have left my room, For I heard you singing Through the gloom.

A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart, and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of, or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory..

Gentle lady, do not sing Sad songs about the end of love; Lay aside sadness and sing How love that passes is enough. Sing about the long deep sleep Of lovers that are dead, and how In the grave all love shall sleep: Love is aweary now.

In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation.

I resent violence or intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due installments plans. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak a different vernacular, so to speak.

Three quarks for Muster Mark!

In the ignorance that implies the impression that knits knowledge that finds the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality.

I'll tickle his catastrophe.