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 fel…

- Irving Howe

No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally el…

- Irving Howe

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

- Irving Howe

Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning thr…

- Irving Howe

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.

- Irving Howe

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

- Irving Howe

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

- Irving Howe

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

- Irving Howe

Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of sugges…

- Irving Howe