Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
American history is not clean.
I never listen to music when I'm writing.
The collective memory of America is short.
The American identity is mind-bogglingly various.
Maybe the light's at the other end of the tunnel.
Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.
'Late bloomer' is another way of saying 'slow learner.'
People rarely grow in humility once they reach the White House.
It is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.
Americans are incredibly polite as long as they get what they want.
Let the record reflect: the American people are a bunch of suckers.
Eruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.
Somewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
Nobody ever came to America with a starry-eyed dream of working for starvation wages.
If you're looking for the phony in American politics, you could do worse than follow the money.
The main thing about writing is... writing. Sitting your butt down in the chair and doing the work.
If you could figure out how to live with family then you'd gone a long way toward finding your peace.
If you want to see a bunch of happy Americans, go out to opening day at any baseball stadium in the land.
I realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write.
By the end of the first decade of writing, I considered myself a confirmed failure in the eyes of the world.
The Kessler Theater is one such gem, an Art Deco beauty … for a slice of real life, there’s always the Kessler.
Obama was elected on the shoulders of an incipient movement that he allowed to languish once he became president.
It took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me - that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
It's amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.
From the start, Trump's rallies had the air of the tent revival, that same hot thrum of militant exorcism and ecstasy.
In the arsenal of the phony, the politics of God is one of the deadliest punches to the sweet spot of the American mind.
Even a cursory run through American history shows exceptionalism has been used to justify bloodshed, oppression, and profit.
The New Deal saved capitalism - saved it from the big-time capitalists - though many of the big-timers didn't see it that way.
In true demagogic fashion, Trump bypassed the head and spoke directly to the gut, to the biles and bubbling acids of raw emotion.
Political rights notwithstanding, 'freedom' rings awfully hollow when you're getting nickel-and-dimed to death in your everyday life.
The funny thing is, about the time I let go of any aspiration toward worldly success, that's about the time I started writing decent work.
I'm ashamed and embarrassed to say that I've read very little of David Foster Wallace's work. It's a huge gap in my education, one of many.
I think if you spend much time dwelling on influence you can get self-conscious about every line you write. That's a great way to freeze up.
I quit law in 1988 to start writing, and it took me 17 years from that point to get a book contract. I guess you can say I was on the slow train.
There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.
Learning essential stuff is as much a discipline as going to the gym or sticking to a diet, and an excellent antidote for the modern condition of being numb and dumb.
I started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.
I kept going back while I was writing the novel - which never sold, may it rest in peace - and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.
I thought when I started writing that I'd have a book out in four or five years, and as it became apparent that that wasn't going to happen, I became increasingly frustrated and unsure of myself.
Pretty much any day is a good day to go to the ballpark, but that first day of the season is special. It's spring. The grass is green. Pessimism is impossible - at least, until the other team scores.
Americans care a lot about authenticity, rightly so. Every election is a quest for the genuine article. This is precisely what makes the long con of American politics such a rich and mystifying study.
My first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era.
If you want to write, then write; if you don't want to write, then don't write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I'd keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.
Surely it's no coincidence that the Era of the AUMF, the Era of Endless War, is also the Golden Era of the Chickenhawk. We keep electing leaders who, on the most basic experiential level, literally have no idea what they're doing.
I really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly - for about six hours - considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.
The national framework of social insurance - social security, unemployment and disability benefits, work programs, and workers' compensation - protected citizens from the kinds of risks that private markets couldn't or wouldn't insure.
I got brilliant stories from people who'd never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who'd published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.
We, America, elected Trump. Putin didn't do it, nor the trolls in St. Petersburg with their zillions of busy bots. They may well have plucked certain strings in the national psyche - played us like a dimestore ukulele - but we were keen to be plucked.
From about the age of 15 or 16 I'd had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I'd done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it - I wouldn't call it "talent" - though I wondered if I'd ever have the guts to actually commit to it.
The smartest thing I did in law school: asking my future wife to go out dancing with me. The smartest thing I did when practicing law: quitting. The smartest thing I've done in writing: following my own head and writing what I wanted to write, and nothing but.