M. R. James Quotes

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I heard one cry in the night, and I heard one laugh afterwards. If I cannot forget that, I shall not be able to sleep again.

M. R. James

Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it.

M. R. James

A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"

M. R. James

"There was a man sitting or kneeling on Sampson's window-sill, and looking in, and I thought he was beckoning…He looked as if he was wet all over: and," he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, "I'm not at all sure that he was alive."

M. R. James

Do I believe in ghosts?...I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me.

M. R. James

M. R. James

M. R. James

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Born: August 1, 1862

Died: June 12, 1936 (aged 73)

Bio: Montague Rhodes James who used the publication name M. R. James was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge, and of Eton College.

Known for:

Collected Ghost Stories (1931)
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904)
Casting the Runes
A Thin Ghost and Others (1919)
The Haunted Doll's House

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