The sense of the past / by Henry James

I was glad they did not run away . . . I would hope that, faced with something as overwhelmingly vast and terrible and left with so few options, I would have the grace and courage to do as they did. I speak of them as though they were outside my control because I feel as if they are, and most of the way through the book I felt this . . . . There is an inevitability about the outcome . . . that, to me, was inherent even on the first page of the book. It happened this way because this is the way it would have happened in this time and this place to these people. That is a satisfying feeling to me, and it is not one that I have had about all my books. And so in that sense, I feel that it succeeds . . . . "On its simplest level, I think it works well as a piece of horror fiction that depends on the juxtaposition of the unimaginably terrible with the utterly ordinary . . . the wonderful Henry James `terror in sunlight' syndrome. Rosemary's Baby is the absolute master of this particular device, and it was that quality, in part, that I strove for ...»