Quote

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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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
Experience
Cynicism
Stories
Passes
Character
Elsewhere
Unlovely
Human
Short
Symptom
Humans
Perhaps
Dealt
Mean
Public
Symptoms
Much
Story
Stereotype
Means
Domain

More quotes by Howard Nemerov

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The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.
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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.
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I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.
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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.
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Why are stamps adorned with kings and presidents? That we may lick their hinder parts and thump their heads.
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I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.
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Once in awhile you have a thought, and you rhyme it.
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A teacher is a person who never says anything once.
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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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When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.
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I have a plot, but not much happens.
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Children, to be illustrious is sad.
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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.
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When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.
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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.
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History is where tensions were.
Howard Nemerov