A Howard Nemerov Reader
A source page for quotes linked to Howard Nemerov.
“The spirit world doesn't admit to communicating with me, so it's fairly even.”
“When you write it doesn't occur to you that somebody could think different from what you do.”
“We think about sex obsessively except during the act, when our minds tend to wander.”
“History is where tensions were.”
“A teacher is a person who never says anything once.”
“The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me.”
“When modern writers gave up telling stories, they gave up the greatest thing we had.”
“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”
“[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).”
“I sometimes talk about the making of a poem within the poem.”
“I am not at all clear what free verse is anymore. That's one of the things you learn not to know.”