“The port from which I set out was, I think, that of the essential loneliness of my life–and it seems to be the port also, in sooth, to which my course again finally directs itself! This loneliness (since I mention it)–what is it still but the deepest thing about one? Deeper, about me, at any rate, than anything else; deeper than my ‘genius,’ deeper than my ‘discipline,’ deeper than my pride, deeper, above all, than the deep counterminings of art.”
Henry James, letter to W. Morton Fullerton (1900)