American Literature Quotes

“I am always in love.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Most people were heartless about turtles because a turtle’s heart will beat for hours after it has been cut up and butchered. But the old man thought, I have such a heart too.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy. He never dreamed about the boy. He simply woke, looked out the open door at the moon and unrolled his trousers and put them on.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

“Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

“Twas noontide of summer,
And mid-time of night;
And stars, in their orbits,
Shone pale, thro' the light
Of the brighter, cold moon,
'Mid planets her slaves,
Herself in the Heavens,
Her beam on the waves.
I gazed awhile
On her cold smile;
Too cold–too cold for me-
There pass'd, as a shroud,
A fleecy cloud,
And I turned away to thee,
Proud Evening Star,
In thy glory afar,
And dearer thy beam shall be;
For joy to my heart
Is the proud part
Thou bearest in Heaven at night,
And more I admire
Thy distant fire,
Than that colder, lowly light.”
― Edgar Allan Poe , The Complete Poetry

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons  attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“I have seen them stagger out of their movie palaces and blink their empty eyes in the face of reality once more, and stagger home, to read the Times, to find out what's going on in the world. I have vomited at their newspapers, read their literature, observed their customs, eaten their food, desired their women, gaped at their art. But I am poor, and my name ends with a soft vowel, and they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood and put me down, but they are old now, dying in the sun and in the hot dust of the road, and I am young and full of hope and love for my country and my times, and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done.”
― John Fante, Ask the Dust

“There is nothing political about American literature.”
― Laura Bush

“The Bohemian who tires of life, who gives up by retirement into insamity or suicide, is not necessarily one who had failed in what he wants to express.”
― Emily Hahn, Romantic Rebels: An Informal History of Bohemianism in America

“Our fiction is not merely in flight from the physical data of the actual world…it is, bewilderingly and embarrassingly, a gothic fiction, nonrealistic and negative, sadist and melodramatic – a literature of darkness and the grotesque in a land of light and affirmation…our classic [American] literature is a literature of horror for boys”
― Leslie Fielder

“I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.”
― Mark Twain

“I can assure you Ernest Hemingway was wrong when he said modern American literature began with Huckleberry Finn. It begins with Moby-Dick, the book that swallowed European civilization whole.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“We are not native. We have no generations of Americans behind us. We have roots elsewhere. We are looking in from the outside. To me, that seems to be perfectly natural.”
― Don DeLillo

“Our orthodox friends need not be told that all merit in this world is comparative; and once for all, we desire to say that where anything which involves qualities or character is asserted, we must be understood to mean "under the circumstances.”
― James Fenimore Cooper, The Pioneers

“Nay, so great was our famine that a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him; and so did divers one another, boyled and stewed with roots and herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her, before it was knowne, for which hee was executed, as hee well deserved. Now whether shee was better roasted, boyled, or carbonado'd I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”
― John Smith, Pocahontas: My Own Story

“It is not they who give the life, it is you who give the life.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, How it Feels to be Colored Me

“Alabama disse para si mesma que eles eram felizes; herdara essa característica da mãe. - Somos muito felizes – falou consigo mesma, assim como sua mãe teria falado -, mas parece que não faz muita diferença para nós se somos ou não. Acho que esperávamos algo mais dramático.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“É uma característica bem minha, junto tudo num grande monte que rótulo de “o passado” e, depois de esvaziar dessa maneira este profundo reservatório que foi um dia meu ser, estou pronta para continuar.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Estar apaixonada, concluiu, é simplesmente uma apresentação de nossos passados a outro indivíduo, pacotes na sua maioria de tão difícil manejo que não conseguimos mais lidar nem com os cordões soltos. Procurar amor é como pedir um novo ponto de partida, uma nova chance na vida. Precocemente para sua idade, acrescentou um adendo: que uma pessoa nunca busca partilhar o futuro com outra, tão vorazes são as secretas expectativas humanas.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Quando descobrimos que temos que renunciar a uma porção tão grande de nós próprios para funcionar, ficamos selvagens... para salvar o resto.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“É muito difícil ser duas pessoas distintas ao mesmo tempo, uma que deseja ter uma lei própria e a outra que deseja conservar todas as belas coisas antigas e ser amada, cuidada e protegida.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“- Essas garotas – diziam as pessoas – pensam que podem fazer qualquer coisa e ficar impunes.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Ela quer que lhe diga como é, sendo jovem demais para saber que não se parece absolutamente com nada e que vai completar seu esqueleto com o que dela se desprender, como um general talvez possa reconstruir uma batalha seguindo os avanços e os recuos de suas forças com alfinetes de cores brilhantes. Ela não sabe que qualquer esforço que fizer se transformará nela mesma.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Era o modo de provar a si mesma, sua necessidade individual de sobreviver. Suas inconsistências pareciam assegurar-lhe um domínio sobre as situações, se assim tivesse desejado.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Alabama não se concedia o direito de examinar esses pontos de vista arbitrários, confluências de sua faceta de mulher, que o beijo do rapaz sem querer evocara. Projetar-se nisso teria sido violar sua confissão de si mesma. Ela tinha medo; achava que seu coração era uma pessoa caminhando. Era, certamente. Era todo mundo caminhando. O espetáculo estava terminado.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“- Mamãe, você gostava muito de Dixie?
- Claro. Ainda gosto.
- Mas ela criava muito problema.
- Não. Ela estava sempre apaixonada.
- Você gostava mais dela que de mim, por exemplo?
- Gosto de todas da mesma maneira.
- Eu também vou ser um problema, se não puder fazer o que quiser.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Convinha ter indicações sobre si própria para ir adiante.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Enquanto isso, é extremamente difícil dirigir uma vida que não tem direção.”
― Zelda Fitzgerald, Save Me the Waltz

“Even if great poetry continues to be written, it has retreated from the center of literary life. Though supported by a loyal coterie, poetry has lost the confidence that it speaks to and for the general culture.”
― Dana Gioia, Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture