Make (the reader) think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications. My values are positively all blanks, save so far as an excited horror, a promoted pity, a created expertness... proceed to read into them more or less fantastic figures.

Henry James
About This Quote

This quote is from The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, and it captures the essence of what I’m trying to say here about writing fiction. If you want to make your readers feel something, that’s what you must do. You must make them think that something is happening that they probably should not be thinking. That something then becomes a part of their reality and they live with it, even if they know better.

Source: The Turn Of The Screw

Some Similar Quotes
  1. This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to... - David Levithan
  2. Some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout. - Charles Bukowski
  3. Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever. - Sylvia Plath
  4. There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it. - Shannon L. Alder
  5. When you're missing a peice of yourself, aching, gut wrenching emptiness begins to take over. Until you find the link that completes your very soul, the feeling will never go away. Most people find a way to fill this void, material possessions, a string of... - Jennifer Salaiz
More Quotes By Henry James
  1. It has made me better loving you.. it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. <span style="margin:15px; display:block"></span>I flattered myself that...
  2. I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. If you'll only trust me, how little you'll be disappointed. Be mine as I am yours.
  3. Live all you can: it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular, so long as you have had your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
  4. True happiness, we are told, consists in getting out of one's self; but the point is not only to get out - you must stay out; and to stay out you must have some absorbing errand.
  5. She took refuge on the firm ground of fiction, through which indeed there curled the blue river of truth.
Related Topics