American Author Quotes

To know a little less and to understand a little more: that, it seems to me, is our greatest need.

James Ramsey Ullman

Am I new minted by thy Stamp indeed?
Mine Eyes are dim; I cannot clearly see.
Be thou my Spectacles that I may read
Thine Image and Inscription stampt on mee.

Tell me thou all pervading mind,
When I this life forsake,
Must ev'ry tender tie unbind,
Each sweet connection break?

Ann Eliza Bleecker

Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

Statistics show that you have nothing to worry about.

Theodore Cogswell

We get mad, sure! Like ice an' snow an' thunder an' lightning storm, but they don't hurt the wheat down in the ground any.' Mom picked up her whitewash brush and slapped it against the rough boards. 'Yolochka, you don't know how love is yet.'

" Tis plain to me
As A B C,
My dear friend, Mr. Neff!"
"Oh, yes! but then,"
Says Mr. N,
"You know I'm D E F!"

Charles Follen Adams

Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw—

Harriet Winslow Sewall

Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.

Only Death could teach us love
By Death we shall grow wise.

Anna Hempstead Branch

There's no sense to being Irish unless you know the world's going to break your heart.

The rules of marriage were simple and easy to follow: faithfulness, patience, compromise. But there were no rules to divorce, or if there were, he had not yet discovered them.

Wasn't no "death do us part" in slavery; wasn't even no "dead or sold" less'n two peoples made it that. Far as two peoples loving with each other, it was any handy place if you was willing —and sometimes if you wasn't; or you jumped the broom if the masters let you marry. But you couldn't help dreaming. Dreams was one of the reasons you got up the next day.

Sherley Anne Williams

Propaganda is a weapon that the Confederacy wields best, and wields heaviest. It is their hammer. And when all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.

Peaches grow wild, and pigs can live in clover;
A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;
The spring begins before the winter's over.

There are so many selves in everybody, and just to explore and exploit one is wrong, dead wrong, for the creative person.

My poetry has become the way of my giving out what music is within me.

Yet I will look upon thy face again, My own romantic Bronx, and it will be A face more pleasant than the face of men. Thy waves are old companions, I shall see A well remembered form in each old tree And hear a voice long loved in thy wild minstrelsy.

Joseph Rodman Drake

Souls bound together can't be forever torn apart by distance and neither by death.

Patti Callahan Henry

You will not fight your battles on my body anymore.

It has taken a great deal of energy, which has not been so difficult to summon as the necessary patience to wait, simply wait much of the time - until my instincts assured me that I had assembled my materials in proper order for a final welding into their natural form.

Don't you think there is always something unspoken between two people?

Tennessee Williams

Sometimes people do things that are complicated. For complicated reasons.

Lauren Barnholdt

Men want a challenge, but they want a challenge they can win.

Whitney Gaskell

We come back to autumn,
to zucchini that wilt like witches' shoes...