Carolina Quotes...it is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.
Randall Jarrell Carolinian
Source
Ch. 4, p. 173
- work
- Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel]
- year
- 1954
- locator
- p. 173
Cite this record
“...it is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to…” Randall Jarrell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-E4D08B95BF. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/e4d08b95bf
More from Randall Jarrell
Early in his life Mr. [Ezra] Pound met with strong, continued, and unintelligent opposition. If people keep opposing you when you are right, you think them fools; and after a time, right or wrong, you think them fools simply because they oppose you. Similarly, you write true things or good things, and end by thinking things true or good simply because you write them
An author frequently chooses solemn or overwhelming subjects to write about; he is so impressed at writing about Life and Death that he does not notice that he is saying nothing of the slightest importance about either.
We live in an age which eschews sentimentality as if it were a good deal more than the devil. (Actually, of course, a writer may be just as sentimental in laying undue emphasis on sexual crimes as on dying mothers: sentimental, like scientific, is an adjective that relates to method, not to matter.)