American Author Quotes

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

Ann Eliza Bleecker

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

Margaret Walker

Sparkling and bright in liquid light
Does the wine our goblets gleam in;
With hue as red as the rosy bed
Which a bee would choose to dream in.
Then fill to-night, with hearts as light
To loves as gay and fleeting
As bubbles that swim on the beaker's brim
And break on the lips while meeting.

Charles Fenno Hoffman

The moon drowsed between the trees like a great yellow moth.

Hallie Erminie Rives

We dwell within the Milky Way, Our Earth, a paltry little mommet, Suspended in a grand array Of constellation, moon and comet.

Arthur Guiterman

The soul of the river had entered my soul, And the gathered power of my soul was moving So swiftly, it seemed to be at rest Under cities of cloud and under Spheres of silver and changing worlds Until I saw a flash of trumpets Above the battlements over Time!

Edgar Lee Masters

We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.

You'd scarce expect one of my age
To speak in public on the stage;
And if I chance to fall below
Demosthenes or Cicero,
Don't view me with a critic's eye,
But pass my imperfections by.
Large streams from little fountains flow,
Tall oaks from little acorns grow.

You lose everything you love in the order in which you love it.

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.

At the moment developing a nice little inoffensive cancer somewhere on dry land seemed infinitely preferable to what she was grimly convinced was soon to be her death by drowning way too far out at sea.

The view from the window, particularly if you enjoy neon, is extraordinary.

Chris Bachelder

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

Anna Hempstead Branch

I say to my breath once again, little breath come from in front of me, go away behind me, row me quietly now, as far as you can, for I am an abyss that I am trying to cross.

I've almost come to feel that it doesn't make much difference what you believe in — the thing that's important is a state of belief. It's much better to believe in nonsense than in nothing.

Margaret Ayer Barnes

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

Ronald Sukenick

Grandfather / advised me: / Learn a trade / I learned / to sit at desk / and condense / No layoff / from this / condensery.

Lorine Niedecker

My dear dead mother wanted me to go into an honorable trade, like grave robbing. Would I listen? No. Be an assassin, like your uncle Gustav, she said. Would I pay heed? No. Apprentice to the Necromancer―

Raymond E. Feist

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

Lauren Barnholdt

Replace ropes with bullets. Hound dogs with German shepherds. A gray uniform with a bulletproof vest. Nothing is new.

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

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

Whitney Gaskell

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

Did you ever hear
Of the frolic fairies dear?
They're a blessed little race,
Peeping up in fancy's face,
In the valley, on the hill,
By the fountain and the rill;
Laughing out between the leaves
That the loving summer weaves.

Frances Sargent Osgood

We are beautiful people
with african imaginations
full of masks and dances and swelling chants
with african eyes, and noses, and arms,
though we sprawl in gray chains in a place
full of winters when what we want is sun.

Imamu Amiri Baraka