# Quote — Henry James, The Turn of the Screw

> He had picked up his hat, which he had brought in, and stood twirling it in a way that gave me, even as I was just nearly reaching port, a perverse horror of what I was doing. To do it in ANY way was an act of violence, for what did it consist of but the obtrusion of the idea of grossness and guilt on a small helpless creature who had been for me a revelation of the possibilities of beautiful intercourse? Wasn't it base to create for a being so exquisite a mere alien awkwardness? I suppose I now read into our situation a clearness it couldn't have had at the time, for I seem to see our poor eyes already lighted with some spark of a prevision of the anguish that was to come.

- Author: [Henry James](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james.md)
- Book: [The Turn of the Screw](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_James#The_Turn_of_the_Screw_(1898)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/he-had-picked

## More from this book

> I seemed to float not into clearness, but into a darker obscure, and within a minute there had come to me out of my very pity the appalling alarm of his being perhaps innocent. It was for the instant confounding and bottomless, for if he were innocent, what then on earth was I?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/i-seemed-to-float.md)

> It came to me in the very horror of the immediate presence that the act would be, seeing and facing what I saw and faced, to keep the boy himself unaware. The inspiration—I can call it by no other name—was that I felt how voluntarily, how transcendently, I might. It was like fighting with a demon for a human soul, and when I had fairly so appraised it I saw how the human soul—held out, in the tremor of my hands, at arm's length—had a perfect dew of sweat on a lovely childish forehead.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/it-came-to.md)

> I was there to protect and defend the little creatures in the world the most bereaved and the most loveable, the appeal of whose helplessness had suddenly become only too explicit, a deep, constant ache of one's own committed heart. We were cut off, really, together; we were united in our danger. They had nothing but me, and I - well, I had them.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/henry-james/the-turn-of-the-screw/i-was-there.md)