The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Modernity consists in a revolt against the prevailing style, an unyielding rage against the official order. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate,… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
“The usual short story cannot have a complex plot, but it often has a simple one resembling a chain with two or three links.… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
“There is utopia and utopia. The kind imposed by an elite in the name of a historical imperative—that utopia is hell. It must lead… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature. — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
“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… — Irving Howe Copy Share Image
