Author Quotes
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, short story writer, poet, teacher, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde and is regarded as one of the most influential and important authors of the 20th century.
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
— Dubliners ("The Dead") (1914)
The closing lines of "The Dead," often called the greatest short story in English. Snow as equalizer — covering everything, erasing distinctions between living and dead.
“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church.”
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
Stephen Dedalus's declaration of independence. Joyce — through Stephen — rejects every institutional claim on the individual: family, nation, religion.
“Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.”
— Ulysses (1922)
Leopold Bloom's reflection. The paradox of evasion — what you flee from is what you carry. Joyce suggests all journeys are ultimately circular.
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.”
— Ulysses (1922)
Stephen Dedalus in the library episode. Error as method — Joyce's entire literary project was built on pushing language past the point of conventional correctness.