I had to admit that in his old-fashioned way O'Hara was still romantic about sex; like Scott Fitzgerald, he thought of it as an upper-class prerogative. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth… — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
Is it strange, then, that in a literature so concerned with realism and with personal liberation this refusal and impoverishment of the life of the spirit have always nourished the screamers, the eccentrics, the pseudo-Whitmans, the calculating terrorists? — Alfred Kazin Copy Share
A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his… — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time, in others' minds. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is… — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others' minds. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
We never know how much has been missing from our lives until a true writer comes along. — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
