System of beliefs: Do you believe
your own theory? / No, Stephen said promptly. [...] I believe, O
Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to
unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve.
Other chap. (Scylla & Charybdis, Ulysses,
213-14; quoted in Hélène Cixous, Joyce: the
(r)use of writing, in Post-structuralist Joyce: Essays
from the French, ed. Derek Attridge & Daniel Ferrer (Cambridge
UP 1984), pp.15-30. |
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Multi-lingual Trieste: I cannot
begin to give you the flavour of the old Austrian Empire. It was
a ramshackle affair but it was charming, gay, and I experienced
more kindnesses in Trieste than ever before or since in my life.
(Joyce to Stuart Gilbert; traditionally quoted in paper calls for
the Trieste Joyce School.)
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Literary heritage: [...] I am
content to go down in history as a scissors and paste man - a hard
but not unfair description (Letter to George Antheil, 3 January
1931; Letter I, p.297.) |
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On the characters of Ulysses:
They all belong to a vanished world, and most of them seem
to have been very curious types. (Letter to Mrs William Murray,
21 Dec. 1922.)
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The past is not past; it is present here and now. (Exiles;
quoted in Gordon Bowker, James Joyce: A Biography, Hachette
2011) [epigraph to Chap. 1] |
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Richard Ellmann writes: The younger brother [Stanislaus] wanted to talk about the political situation in Italy and in Trieste, but James was impatient, For Gods sake dont talk politics. Im not interested in politics. The only thing that interests me is style. (Ellmann, James Joyce, 1982 edn., p.697. |