“[William Carlos Williams] saw all the little magazines, from Others to This Quarter, and before and after them, as one single magazine, ‘a continuous magazine . . . with an absolute freedom of editorial policy and a succession of proprietorships that follows a democratic rule’. Take the little magazine away, he wrote, and a prominent support is cut from under the poet, and for years he may get nothing into print; ‘loose ends are left dangling, men are lost’, he wrote in true sorrow, ‘promises that needed culture, needed protection and wit and courage to back them simply die’.”

(Kay Boyle, p. 173 in Robert McAlmon & Kay Boyle, Being Geniuses Together.)

“He was working on Ulysses at the time and often would make appointments to read rather lengthy extracts of what he had most recently written. Probably he read to me about a third of the book. It was impressive to observe how everything was grist to his mill. He was constantly leaping upon phrases and bits of slang which came naturally from my American lips, and one night, when he was slightly spiffed, he wept a bit while explaining his love or infatuation for words, mere words. Long before this explanation I had recognized that malady in him, as probably every writer has had that disease at some time or other, generally in his younger years. Joyce never recovered. He loved particularly words like ‘ineluctable’, ‘metempsychosis’ – grey, clear, abstract, fine-sounding words that are ‘ineluctable’ a bit themselves.”

(Robert McAlmon, in Robert McAlmon & Kay Boyle, Being Geniuses Together, p. 26.)