Alfred Kazin Quotations

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 as a whole.

Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve.

What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life?

A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody's business but his own.

Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway.

If we practiced medicine like we practice education, wed look for the liver on the right side and left side in alternate years.

The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.

When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair.

I liked reading and working out my ideas in the midst of that endless crowd walking in and out of the (library) looking for something. I, too, was seeking fame and fortune by sitting at the end of a long golden table next to the sets of American authors on the open shelves.

Only power can get people into a position where they may be noble.