James Joyce

Literature Irish 1882 – 1941 263 quotes

Ulysses revolutionized the modern novel

Most quoted

"I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning."

— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning."

— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

"I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile, and cunning."

— from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1916

All quotes by James Joyce (263)

I am a great admirer of myself.

Letter to Stanislaus Joyce 1905

Life is a series of awakenings.

Notebook entry

I have been for the last two years trying to make a book which I think will be a rather important one.

Letter to Grant Richards 1906

My mind is a chaos of all kinds of things.

Letter to Nora Barnacle 1909

I am not a writer of books, I am a writer of words.

Interview

I have not been able to write a word for a week. I am afraid I am going mad.

Letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver

I am trying to do for the English language what the French Symbolists did for French.

Interview

I have put 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.

Attributed, regarding Finnegans Wake

I am a man of letters, not a man of action.

Interview

I am quite content to let the professors and the critics do their work. I have done mine.

Attributed

I am a great admirer of the English language, and I have tried to do it justice.

Interview

I am not interested in the future, only in the present.

Interview

I am not a realist, I am a symbolist.

Interview

I have been writing for twenty years, and I have not yet found my public.