“ To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious ill… Jacob M. Appel
“ One often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject, though it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of this Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into plac… Herman Melville
“ And yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes. Herman Melville
“ Herman Melville came to see me at the Consulate, looking much as he used to do (a little paler, and perhaps a little sadder), in a rough outside coat, and with his characteristic gravity and reserve o… Nathaniel Hawthorne
“ But the reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there was none in his spade Herman Melville
“ And the drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all with a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could adequately tell. Herman Melville
“ It is a truth universally acknowledged, he’d mused, that most people will never find their ‘call me Ishmael’. Django Wylie
“ But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to… Herman Melville
“ It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnis… Herman Melville