Dust Bowl Quotes

17 quotes from 17 authors

When the wind turned the plains into a choking haze, artists found a stark canvas that speaks today. Photographers captured grainy horizons; writers described cracked soil; voices recalled dust that reshaped lives. For more on environmental hardship, see Climate Change, Great Migration, and American History pages.

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Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is now its dust bowl.

Ilana Mercer

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The Woody Guthrie 'Dust Bowl' tunes were really fascinating.

Ry Cooder

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I came up in photography, and Dust Bowl-era photography is a lot of the reason that I got behind the camera in…

Rachel Morrison

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The singer-songwriter has always played music that was stylistically rooted in the '30s and the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. But…

Steve Earle

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“For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados,…

Markham Shaw Pyle

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“Sharp-nosed and thin-lipped, with dark eyes framed by black plastic eyeglasses, haircut and shave long overdue. He felt familiar. Then I realized…

Louise Miller

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Tools can rule men sooner than they expect; the plow makes man the lord of the garden but also the refugee from…

Ivan Illich

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“In our time we maintain colonies on Mars, on Luna; we’re perfecting workable interstellar flight—these people have not been able to cope…

Philip K. Dick

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As a young girl, I saw commitment in my grandmother, who helped Grandpa homestead our farm on the Kansas prairie. Somehow they…

Sheri L. Dew

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“What you're experiencing isn't a dry spell. It's a dust bowl. Tell me, do you find cob webs in there every time…

Parker S. Huntington

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“Geuze compared sea-level rise to other transformative catastrophes, such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a partly man-made natural disaster that…

Jeff Goodell

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“I am drawn to Tom Sawyer Island because a tribute to Mark Twain would not be out of place in a theme…

Sarah Vowell

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My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them…

Chris Cornell

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My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl, nine people in one room kind of place - and…

Jennifer Garner

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People say to us how brave we are, fighting the wilderness, braving the isolation of the Outback. But these are easy opponents,…

Sara Henderson

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“Once in power, Zayed was an energized man. One of his first acts in office was to throw open the palace strongbox,…

Jim Krane

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“I write these words in May of 2011, the week after a huge outbreak of tornadoes killed hundreds across the American South;…

Bill McKibben

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