American Novelist Quotes

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Henry James

Pearl S. Buck

Nathaniel Hawthorne

J. D. Salinger

Sylvia Plath

Toni Morrison

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

L. Sprague de Camp

I have fallen in love with American names,
The sharp, gaunt names that never get fat,
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims,
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat,
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Stephen Vincent Benét

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Mickey Spillane

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Expecting to be able to get rid of the competitive drive, first of all, flies in the face of human nature — and little girls certainly have this drive, as much as little boys do, or at least the little girls I have observed in my immediate family have it.

I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe.

Zora Neale Hurston

You make choices that are good and sound, but the gods have other plans for you.

Cam's wings were so bright they were almost blinding as they pulsed. "Holy Hell," Callie whispered, blinking."More or less," Arriane said

(Socrates) said there were only two possibilities. Either the soul is immortal or, after death, things would be again as blank as they were before we were born.

Narrative is radical, creating us at the very moment it is being created.

It just goes to show that what one person considers a "bad attitude" might actually just be total frustration over being pushed beyond the brink of one's mental and physical endurance.

I shared this insight with some other boat owners, and they all agreed that, definitely, putting your boar into the water is asking for trouble. Most of them have had their boats sitting in their driveways long enough to be registered historical landmarks.

It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.

There is a secret society of seven men that controls the finances of the world. This is known to everyone but the details are not known. There are some who believe that it would be better if one of those seven men were a financier.

When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.

The future may be an enemy. Time can turn happy days and nights into nothing.

Elizabeth Hardwick

My writing about Cuba [is] more like an act of creation. Whatever my Cuba is about, it's my own version. I'm not a cultural anthropologist.

All schoolchildren are hostages to red tape and fiscal insufficiency.

Who would have thought something that happened that long ago could have such power?

Ye'll learn perhaps that in law, a friend prosecuting is better than a friend defending!

Elinor Macartney Lane

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.

Charlaine Harris

Nothing is ever simple. What do you do when you discover you like parts of the role you're trying to escape?

Let me tell you, people go on and on about what a great idea electricity was, but I'm going to put toilet paper right next to the wheel and say those are the best ideas anyone's ever had. Scoff at it if you will, but try living for two millennia without it and then we'll talk.

There's not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer.