John Rowe Townsend Quotes & Sayings

It is natural if you feel as strongly as most decent people do about racial discrimination to welcome books that give it short shrift; but to assess books on their racial attitude rather than their literary value, and still more to look on books as ammunition in the battle, is to take a further and still more dangerous step from literature-as-morality to literature-as-propaganda - a move toward conditions in which, hitherto, literary art has signally failed to thrive.

("Didacticism in Modern Dress" from Only Connect (2nd ed., 1980). — John Rowe Townsend

Kate, like many other people, found herself a fascinating topic, and when encouraged was very willing to hold forth. — John Rowe Townsend