William Dean Howells - American Quotes

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Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself.

William Dean Howells

Our novelists, therefore, concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American, and seek the universal in the individual rather than the social interests.

William Dean Howells

We invite our novelists... to concern themselves with the more smiling aspects of life, which are the more American.

William Dean Howells

What the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.

William Dean Howells

Yes, what the American public wants is a tragedy with a happy ending.

William Dean Howells

I am not sorry for having wrought in common, crude material so much; that is the right American stuff; and perhaps hereafter, when my din is done, if anyone is curious to know what that noise was, it will be found to have proceeded from a small insect which was scraping about on the surface of our life and trying to get into its meaning for the sake of the other insects larger or smaller. That is, such has been my unconscious work; consciously, I was always, as I still am, trying to fashion a piece of literature out of the life next at hand.

William Dean Howells