Henry James

“It all lies in half a dozen words,” I said to her, “words that re­ally set­tle the mat­ter. ‘Think, you know, what I might do!’ He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to the ground what he ‘might’ do.

I could only get on at all by tak­ing “na­ture” into my con­fi­dence and my ac­count, by treat­ing my mon­strous or­deal as a push in a di­rec­tion un­usual, of course, and un­pleas­ant, but de­mand­ing, af­ter all, for a fair front, only an­other turn of the screw of or­di­nary hu­man virtue.

sleep­ing in the room with his mother and wak­ing her up in the ter­ror of it; wak­ing her not to dis­si­pate

there is no wealth but life