Select language, opens an overlay

Quotation

Community quotations are the opinions of contributing users. These quotations do not represent the opinions of the Edmonton Public Library.
And I think now, as my fiftieth birthday draws near, about the American novelist Thomas Wolfe, who was only thirty-eight years old when he died. He got a lot of help in organizing his novels from Maxwell Perkins, his editor at Charles Scribner's Sons. I have heard that Perkins told him to keep in mind as he wrote, a unifying idea, a hero's search for a father. It seems to me that really truthful American novels would have the heroes and heroines alike looking for <i>mothers</i> instead. This needn't be embarrassing. It's simply true. A mother is more useful. I wouldn't feel particularly good if I found another father. Neither would Dwayne Hoover. Neither would Kilgore Trout.