Quote

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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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
Facts
Doesn
Nothing
Discern
Make
Terribly
Historian
Responsible
Case
Cases

More quotes by Howard Nemerov

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That so much of our experience, or the stereotype which passes for it should be dealt with by means of the short story is perhaps a symptom not unnoticeable elsewhere in the public domain of an unlovely cynicism about human character.
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.
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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
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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I liked the kid who wrote me that he had to do a term paper on a modern poet and he was doing me because, though they say you have to read poems twice, he found he could handle mine in one try.
Howard Nemerov
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The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
Howard Nemerov
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The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.
Howard Nemerov
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I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
Howard Nemerov
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I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
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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I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.
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History is where tensions were.
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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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
Howard Nemerov
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Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.
Howard Nemerov
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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
Howard Nemerov
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
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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Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
Howard Nemerov