American Author Quotes

A feller's glad to be a friend, Out fishin'. A helpin' hand he'll always lend, Out fishin' The brotherhood of rod and line An' sky an' stream is always fine; Men come real close to God's design, Out fishin'. A feller isn't plotting schemes, Out fishin'. He's only busy with his dreams, Out fishin' His livery is a coat of tan; His creed, to do the best he can; A feller's always mostly man Out fishin'.

Edgar Guest
Edgar Guest
How sad they are, the promises we never return to. They stay in our mouths, roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.

Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield
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
Joseph Rodman Drake
In this life you sometimes have to choose between pleasing God and pleasing man. - In the long run, it's better to please God - he's more apt to remember.

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

Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
We are the whirlwinds that winnow the West—
We scatter the wicked like straw!
We are the Nemeses, never at rest—
We are Justice, and Right, and the Law!

So I cradle this average violin that knows
Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
The possibility of free declamation anchored
To a dull refrain....

John Ashbery
John Ashbery
Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day.

The big picture is that there is no big picture.
That's why we keep painting it.

Through my Invisible new veil Of finity, I see November's world — Low scud, slick street, three giggling girls — As, oddly, not as sombre As December, But as green As anything: As spring.

To say in print what she thinks is the last thing the woman novelist or journalist is so rash as to attempt…Her publishers are not women.

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

James Dickey
James Dickey
Some things never leave a person:
scent of the hair of one you love,
the texture of persimmons,
in your palm, the ripe weight.

Neither awake nor in a dark dream are perilous blades just as they seem.

Those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy.

One of the frustrations of having a mind trained to think and consider possibilities was that it couldn't simply be stopped once engaged.

There was no point in doing art if you were going to be second-rate.

I read, for the first time, of the Carolina Parakeet-a North American parakeet whose green, yellow and reddish-orange plumage appeared vivacious and altogether quite wonderful. As stunning as I found the hawk-chased conures, this bird astounded me even more. That the Carolina Parakeet was extinct simply added to my amazement.

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

To misunderstand the nature and threat of evil is to risk being blindsided by it.

Only once you destroy who you think you are can you embrace who you truly are

The religions of the world are luminous in their individuality, and they have valuable social and soulmaking functions. Surely someday we will quit killing each other over their different strategies.

Oh! sing it in the light of freedom's morn,
Tho' tyrant wars have made the earth a grave;
The good, the great, and true, are, if so born,
And so with slaves, chains do not make the slave!

" 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
Charles Follen Adams
When and where will another come to take your holy place?
Old man mumbling in his dotage, or crying child, unborn?