19 Quotes by Irving Howe

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order.

There can't be much development of action or theme in such stories, but at least there is some. By contrast, in the short short the very idea of character seems to lose its significance, seems in fact to drop out of sight. We see human figures in a momentary flash. We see them in fleeting profile. We see them in archetypal climaxes which define their mode of existence. Situation tends to replace character, representative condition to replace individuality.("Introduction")

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.

I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges of roses. Pink roses. Suddenly I felt the most powerful feeling of peace, and I had the thought that death, if it means an absorption into a reality like the one that was before me, might be all right.

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.

Good readers make much out of little.

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.