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"There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding."
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"For a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and-by some sad, strange irony-it does not bind us children to our parents. For if it did, if we could answer their love not with gratitude but with equal love, life would lose much of its pathos and much of its squalor, and we might be wonderfully happy."

"We came, Takver thought, from a great distance to each other. We have always done so. Over great distances, over years, over abysses of chance. It is because he comes from so far away that nothing can separate us. Nothing, no distances, no years, can be greater than the distance that's already between us, the distance of our sex, the differences of our being, our minds; that gap, that abyss which we bridge with a look, with a touch, with a word, the easiest thing in the world. Look how far away he is, asleep. Look how far away he is, he always is. But he comes back, he comes back, he comes back...."

"Some people are like thorns. But you have to let them be thorns, because thorns can't turn into petals. The trick is not letting them prick you; never let a thorn prick you!"

"Those who laugh with you when you laugh are acquaintances, those who cry with you when you cry are companions, and those who do both are friends."

"Behind you, leave your enemies. Beside you, keep your family. Around you, maintain your friends. Within you, cherish God."

"Ok. You fuck me, then snub me. You love me, you hate me. You show me a sensitive side, then you turn into a total asshole. Is this a pretty accurate description of our relationship."

"I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life."

"Where are you?" he asked. "I'm right here" she said. "I know, but it feels like one percent of you is somewhere else, where is that one percent?" he said. "I don't know....I think I'm always like that..." she answered. "I like that." "You do?" "Yes, because that way, I have to always look for the one percent to find it."

"Two married partners do not just live with each other, they live in each other, neurologically speaking."

"Lust likes to rush, while love hates to wait."
Explore more quotes by Henry James

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"

"Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints."

"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."

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

"To take what there is in life and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived, to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that; this, doubtless, is the right way to live."

"I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all."

"If you have work to do, don't wait to feel like it; set to work and you will feel like it."

"I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it."
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