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Quote by Randall Jarrell

“Is an institution always a man's shadow shortened in the sun, the lowest common denominator of everybody in it?”

Author

Randall Jarrell was an influential American poet, born on May 6, 1914, and died on October 14, 1965. His poetry is known for its profound emotion and unique style, considered a significant representative of American poetry in the 20th century. more

“Goethe said, "The author whom a lexicon can keep up with is worth nothing"; Somerset Maugham says that the finest compliment he ever received was a letter in which one of his readers said: "I read your novel without having to look up a single word in the dictionary." These writers, plainly, lived in different worlds.”

World Looks Said Different Novel Reader Letters Look Up Compliment Finest Dictionary Different Worlds Single Word Lexicon

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Many poets write as if they had been decerebrated, and not simply lobotomized, as a cure for their melancholia.”

Ifs Writing Poet Cures

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Age could not wither nor custom stale her infinite monotony: in fact, neither Age nor Custom could do anything (as they said, their voices rising) with the American novelist Gertrude Johnson.”

Said Facts Age Voice Infinite Novelists Rising Customs They Said Johnson Stale Monotony Gertrude

Book:Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

Source: Pictures from an Institution: A Comedy

“our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.”

World Matter Quarrels

Book:A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables

Source: A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables

“I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class's teacher, when the class got to Evangeline , kept echoing in my ears: "We're coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don't be babies and start counting the pages." I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages.”

Long Dream Girl Class Boys Teacher Baby Bed Pages Ears Lays Grades Counting Boy And Girl Eighth Grade

Book:A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables

Source: A sad heart at the supermarket: essays & fables

“You give me the feeling that the universe Was made by something more than human For something less than human. But I identify myself, as always, With something that there's something wrong with, With something human.”

Giving Humans Made Feelings Universe Give Me

Book:The Lost World

Source: The Lost World

“One of the most puzzling things about a novel is that "the way it really was" half the time is, and half the time isn't, the way it ought to be in the novel.”

Way Half Novel Ought Puzzling

Author:Randall Jarrell

“The best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the road to Limbo is paved with writers who have done everything I am being sympathetic, not satiric for the very best reasons.”

Reason Done Causes Worst Ruins Sympathetic Limbo

Author:Randall Jarrell

“Most poets, most good poets even, no longer have the heart to write about what is most terrible in the world of the present: the bombs waiting beside the rockets, the hundreds of millions staring into the temporary shelter of their television sets, the decline of the West that seems less a decline than the fall preceding an explosion.”

World Writing Heart Seems Fall Waiting Millions Television Poet Terrible West Staring Bombs Temporary Decline Shelter Explosions Rockets

Author:Randall Jarrell

Quote by Randall Jarrell

Author

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