Just finished reading Henry James and I’m convinced every sentence has a trust fund and three chaperones. by Mark Twain

Henry James doesn’t write novels, he rents them by the paragraph.

And yet you both read it, which is the sort of bad press I can live with.

That is unfair, Mark. Some sentences are merely expensive; Henry’s are a whole inheritance.

I write with care, gentlemen, because some of us prefer a finished sentence to a loud one.

Care is fine, Henry, but your commas act like they’re paid by the hour.

There it is: literary criticism delivered as a dismissal and a miracle.