Howard Nemerov (February 29, 1920 – July 5, 1991) was an American poet. He was twice Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, from 1963 to 1964 and again from 1988 to 1990. The Collected Poems of Howard Nemerov (1977), he won the National Book Award for Poetry, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and Bollingen Prize. These Howard Nemerov quotes will inspire you in life.
Best Howard Nemerov Quotes
- “Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.” ― Howard Nemerov
- “I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.” ―
- “Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.” ―
- “The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.” ―
- “A teacher is a person who never says anything once.” – Howard Nemerov
- “Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow’s speed.” – Howard Nemerov
- “Writing is like a relationship with your bowels. First, you can, then you can’t. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.” – Howard Nemerov
- “When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.” – Howard Nemerov
- “[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).” ―
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“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.” – Howard Nemerov
- “I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.” ―
- “The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth – the subject to which you are condemned.” – Howard Nemerov
- “It may be said that poems are in one way like icebergs: only about a third of their bulk appears above the surface of the page.” – Howard Nemerov
- “Both poet and painter want to reach the silence behind the language, the silence within the language. Both painter and poet want their work to shine not only in daylight but (by whatever illusionist magic) from within.” – Howard Nemerov
- “When I was starting to write, the great influence was T.S. Eliot and after that William Butler Yeats.” – Howard Nemerov
- “[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).” – Howard Nemerov
- “A lot happens by accident in poetry.” – Howard Nemerov
- “Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.” – Howard Nemerov
- “When you write it doesn’t occur to you that somebody could think differently from what you do.” – Howard Nemerov
- “Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow`s speed.” ―
