James Joyce
4 books by James Joyce to read free, each with its best passages and lines, and the best quotes from all of them below.
Where to start
-
Ulysses
A man passes a day in early twentieth-century Dublin, in a journey patterned on Homer’s Odyssey.
265,286 words, about 19 hours
Then
-
Dubliners
Fifteen short stories about middle-class life in early 20th-century Dublin.
68,301 words, about 5 hours
-
Exiles
An unmarried couple in early twentieth-century Dublin struggle with the consequences of their respective infidelities.
26,951 words, about 2 hours
-
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The autobiographical story of Joyce’s youth in Ireland and his escaping the country’s conformity and mediocrity to blossom as a writer on the continent.
85,508 words, about 6 hours
James Joyce quotes
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke.
Hard to know me? I sent you from Rome the chapters of my book as I wrote them; and letters for nine long years. Well, eight years.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.
Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.
Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!
The asthmatic voice of protestantism.
He thought that he was sick in his heart if you could be sick in that place.
They understand what we say better than we understand them.
We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed.
Thirtyseven copies have now been sold in Dublin.
You could die just the same on a sunny day.
Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory.
The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
All things come to those who wait.
Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!
I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?
These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes.
I have come up from a lower world and I am filled with astonishment when I find that people have any redeeming virtue at all.
To think of them beaten and swollen with pain all in a moment made him feel so sorry for them as if they were not his own but someone else’s that he felt sorry for.