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When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.

Howard Nemerov

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Howard Nemerov
Age: 71 †
Born: 1920
Born: February 29
Died: 1991
Died: July 5
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Gave
Greatest
Modern
Literature
Stories
Thing
Telling
Writers

More quotes by Howard Nemerov

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I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art - we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.
Howard Nemerov
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History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov
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I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.
Howard Nemerov
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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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The historian is terribly responsible to what he can discern are the facts of the case, but he's nothing if he doesn't make out a case.
Howard Nemerov
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I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Howard Nemerov
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Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.
Howard Nemerov
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Shakespeare tells the same stories over and over in so many guises that it takes a long time before you notice.
Howard Nemerov
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Absolute power corrupts absolutely and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
Howard Nemerov
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This Constitutional Republic called America is an historic aberration. Any honest student of history will note that the prevailing socio-economic system is feudalism, where a tiny minority control the vast majority of wealth, power, and resources. In doing so, they have absolute control over the 99% of the population. Power equals control.
Howard Nemerov
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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
Howard Nemerov
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
Howard Nemerov
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
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Short stories amount for the most part to parlour tricks, party favours with built-in snappers, gadgets for including recognition and reversals
Howard Nemerov
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Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
Howard Nemerov
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I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
Howard Nemerov
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When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
Howard Nemerov
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[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).
Howard Nemerov
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History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.
Howard Nemerov