“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
The designation is useful and necessary and sometimes limiting but it is only limiting to people who think, for example, that African-American… — Roxane Gay Copy Share Image
“Don Raimondo tells me what he can’t tell them. “The emptiness on the surface of a wall left by a sold bookshelf… — Erri DeLuca 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
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
One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when… — Jonathan Raban 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
Héctor Tobar's accomplished first novel affords a perspective that is overdue and urgently needed in North American literature- -an insider's vision of… — Stuart Dybek Copy Share Image
English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And… — Paula Gunn Allen Copy Share Image
“Sociologically, politically, psychologically, spiritually, it was never enough for James Baldwin to categorize himself as one thing or the other: not just… — Aberjhani 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
“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
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
Dagwood Bumstead was a great unrecognized hero of American literature. He showed up every day, he got knocked down every day, he… — James L. Brooks Copy Share Image
All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot… — Sherman Alexie Copy Share Image
People don't realize how black people, minorities, women as well, all their lives, they have had to make the effort to understand… — Raoul Peck Copy Share Image
Throughout African-American literature, the writer has, in a sense, been burdened by the necessity of pleading the case for the whole race.… — Glenn Ligon Copy Share Image
I've been as bad an influence on American literature as anyone I can think of. — Dashiell Hammett Copy Share Image
Great song lyrics are as valid a part of American literature as any novel. — Greg Iles Copy Share Image
I think American literature is in a tedious place, horrible place. I can't even engage with it. — Jessa Crispin Copy Share Image
One does not arise from such a book as Sister Carrie with a smirk of satisfaction; one leaves it infinitely touched. — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“I just have goals. Big ones. I have big goals that involve big things in small places. -Gunner” — Dani Stowe Copy Share Image
“Serving time doesn't make you fit to do anything but serve more time.” — Donald Hays Copy Share Image
The women of the South have brought into American literature a unique mixture of domesticity and grotesquerie. — James Dickey Copy Share Image
American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter — Guillermo Cabrera Infante Copy Share Image
Modern American literature was born in protest, born in rebellion, born out of the sense of loss and indirection which was imposed… — Alfred Kazin Copy Share Image
Every reader of the Dreiser novels must cherish astounding specimens--of awkward, platitudinous marginalia, of whole scenes spoiled by bad writing, of phrases… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It… — Sam Neill Copy Share Image
[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is… — Hal Holbrook Copy Share Image
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 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
One that actually relates to all Latin American literature: that is, not every author is interested in being a representative of his… — Adam Morris Copy Share Image
If there was ever a dissenter from the national optimismit was surely Edgar Allan Poe--without question the bravest and mostoriginal, if perhaps… — H. L. Mencken Copy Share Image
“Nay, so great was our famine that a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat… — John Smith Copy Share Image
I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug… — Mike Tyson Copy Share Image
I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish… — Edward Hirsch Copy Share Image
Some people might be surprised that 'Rambo's creator has a doctorate in American literature. One of my influences is Henry James, whose… — David Morrell Copy Share Image
![“[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is what has made it a great American novel and the most widely read book in American Literature around the world today.” quote by Hal Holbrook](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/ca3/hal-holbrook-17109_american-literature_mark-twain-is-pointing-at-you-you-the-re_3109645.jpg)
