American literature Quote by H. L. Mencken

These are all novels, all about people that never existed, the people that read them it makes them unhappy with their own lives. Makes…

— Ray Bradbury

The book of nature is the book of fate. She turns the gigantic pages, leaf after leaf never returning one.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“After finishing a good book, it was sometimes days before she could shake off that other reality; the one she'd dipped into, leaving the…

— Ann Sutherland

No one ever addresses the possibility that a writer might not like her book.

— Emily Gould

I have two sisters, and I think siblings are always going to be irresistible for novelists. They have been throughout time and they'll continue…

— Maggie O'Farrell

This is one of the defining sorrows of books: that we cannot see one another.

— John Hodgman

“Carrie was one of the ambitious yet common-place girls who wish to shine, without knowing the difference between the glitter of a candle which…

— Louisa May Alcott

Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But…

— Jane Austen

“Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe…

— Gregory Maguire

Dreiser wanted to write the next great American novel, and his desperation pervades [ Sister Carrie ] like an unsavory pit stain.

— Theodore Dreiser

Novels are written, not wished into existence. You have to sit your ass in the chair or nothing gets done.

— John Dufresne

“As an only child, Cassandra found the well-worn paths of sibling interaction fascinating and horrifying in equal parts.”

— Kate Morton