James Joyce Quotes

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

'History,' Stephen said, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake

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 defense the only arms I allow myself to use —silence, exile and cunning.

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

Your battles inspired me - not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

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's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.