I look at western literature and especially North American literature, and I feel like it gets bogged down so much with all… — Miguel Syjuco Copy Share Image
I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James… — James Lee Burke Copy Share Image
“I can assure you Ernest Hemingway was wrong when he said modern American literature began with Huckleberry Finn. It begins with Moby-Dick,… — E.L. Doctorow Copy Share Image
If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
“There are no backwaters where things can breed—our connectivity is so high and so global that there are no more Seattles and… — William Gibson Copy Share Image
When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers' Workshop for fiction writing, I felt both coveted and hated. My white… — Jenny Zhang Copy Share Image
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be… — Mark Twain Copy Share Image
When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I… — Aleksandar Hemon Copy Share Image
I have for myself no conceivable complaint to make, and yet for American literature in general, and its standing in a country… — Sinclair Lewis Copy Share Image
If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can… — Ishmael Reed Copy Share Image
The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
[John Adams's] vividly descriptive prose is supremely quotable. Adams wears his heart on his sleeve and reveals all of his ambitions, doubts,… — Gordon S. Wood Copy Share Image
American literature has been, and is, singularly deficient in established critics who have anything like a rational conception of their jobs. The… — Burton Rascoe Copy Share Image
“Rome took all the vanity out of me, for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live, and gave… — Louisa May Alcott Copy Share Image
“The great writers, Conrad, Maugham and Melville, spent only a few years in the South Seas, but their memory of those waters… — James A. Michener Copy Share Image
These self-appointed deacons in the Church of Latter-Day American Literature seem to regard generosity (of words) with suspicion, texture with dislike, and… — Stephen King Copy Share Image
The Puritan, of course, is not entirely devoid of aesthetic feeling. He has a taste for good form; he responds to style;… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“Twas noontide of summer, And mid-time of night; And stars, in their orbits, Shone pale, thro' the light Of the brighter, cold… — Edgar Allan Poe Copy Share Image
“Here the earth, as if to prove its immensity, empties itself. Gertrude Stein said: 'In the United States there is more space… — William Least Heat-Moon Copy Share Image
“When it comes to the Civil War, all of our popular understanding, our popular history and culture, our great films, the subtext… — Ta-Nehisi Coates Copy Share Image
“And romance is just the place for creating mythic figures doing mythic things. Like carving 'civilzation' out of the wilderness. Like showing… — Thomas C. Foster Copy Share Image
“Athenaeum, or Jonathan Edwards at thirteen entering Yale College, and while yet of a tender age shining in the horizon of American… — Charles Stewart Given Copy Share Image
In the last fifteen years or so, the women's novel has turnedinto the Amtrak of American literature; crashing through the gates at… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
The main reason I decided to study Latin American literature was because I'd gotten somewhat bored by the American fiction I was… — Adam Morris Copy Share Image
As if paralyzed by the national fear of ideas, the democratic distrust of whatever strikes beneath the prevailing platitudes, it evades all… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“You might like that one. But I’ll tell you the same thing I tell my students when they complain about the depressing… — Matthew Quick Copy Share Image
I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard. — Simon Sebag Montefiore Copy Share Image
Lincoln is a genius of language and a brilliant writer who deserves to be seen as part of the canon of great… — Fred Kaplan Copy Share Image
Jerome Charyn is one of the most important writers in American literature and one of only three now writing whose work makes… — Michael Chabon Copy Share Image
I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen… — Amitava Kumar Copy Share Image
Our literature, despite several false starts that promised much, is chiefly remarkable, now as always, for its respectable mediocrity. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing… — Hemingway, Ernest Copy Share Image
I get up at an unholy hour in the morning my work day is completed by the time the sun rises. I… — David Eddings Copy Share Image
The first function of violence in Native American literatures is simply to acknowledge that violence is implicit, like gravity and sunlight, in… — Robert Bringhurst Copy Share Image
I like contemporary American literature and I like biographies and I like jazz and I like baseball and I like writers who… — Jonathan Frakes Copy Share Image
Nothing could be more inappropriate to American literature than its English source since the Americans are not British in sensibility. — Wallace Stevens Copy Share Image
“In that moment I think I learned the real tragedy of living too long. It is not losing one's health or one's… — Louis Auchincloss Copy Share Image
“We are not native. We have no generations of Americans behind us. We have roots elsewhere. We are looking in from the… — Don DeLillo Copy Share Image
I think most Native American literature is unreadable by the vast majority of Native Americans. Generally speaking Indians don't read books. It's… — Sherman Alexie Copy Share Image
It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives… — Anatole Broyard Copy Share Image
![“[John Adams's] vividly descriptive prose is supremely quotable. Adams wears his heart on his sleeve and reveals all of his ambitions, doubts, and insecurities, especially in his diary, which is one of the greatest and most readable in all of American literature.” quote by Gordon S. Wood](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/52f/gordon-s-wood-13199_ambition_john-adams-s-vividly-descriptive-prose-i_1856135.jpg)
