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
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
The forward march of American literature is usually chronicled by way of its male novelists. There is little sense, in that version… — Michelle Dean Copy Share Image
“I have often been mildly amused when I think that the great American novel was not written about New England or Chicago.… — James A. Michener 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
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
“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
In my first class at the University of Kentucky, my American Literature professor came in, and the first sentence out of his… — Sam Abell Copy Share Image
I always thought books were just the canon, things I couldn't identify with. And then I was introduced to really amazing multicultural… — Matt de la Pena Copy Share Image
“But I'll tell you the same thing I tell my students when they complain about the depressing nature of American literature: life… — Matthew Quick 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
In college, I started to get soaked in the materials. Subsequently, I worked with R.W.B. Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks… — David Milch 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
American literature was enriched with Men Who Loved Allison … Of the actual and eventual worth of this romance I cannot pretend… — James Branch Cabell 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
Does people not asking me about Asian American literature mean they don't see it as its own literary tradition? I certainly believe… — Hanya Yanagihara 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
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
I am interested in Scripture and theology. This is an interest that I can assume I would share with a pastor, so… — Marilynne Robinson 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
“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
“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
“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
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
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
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
“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 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
“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 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 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
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'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
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
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
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
