“Magical . . . A coming-of-age story, perhaps the prime example of that genre in English literature . . . Even now, twenty-seven years after reading it for the first time, its moods come back to me.” —Karl Ove Knausgaard, from the Foreword
“One believes in Stephen Dedalus as one believes in few characters in fiction.” —H. G. Wells
“[Mr. Joyce is] concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its myriad message through the brain, he disregards with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, though it be probability or coherence or any other of the handrails to which we cling for support when we set our imaginations free.” —Virginia Woolf
“[A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will] remain a permanent part of English literature.” —Ezra Pound
