American Writer Quotes

• I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

  Jack London

  Sleep, Atoms, Writing Words

  Quoted in Bulletin (San Francisco), 2 Dec. 1916.

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• The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

  John Cheever

  Rain, Taken, Writing

  "The Journals of John Cheever" by Robert Gottlieb, 1963.

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• Henry David Thoreau, who never earned much of a living or sustained a relationship with any woman that wasn't brotherly -- who lived mostly under his parents' roof . . . who advocated one day's work and six days "off" as the weekly round and was considered a bit of a fool in his hometown . . . is probably the American writer who tells us best how to live comfortably with our most constant companion, ourselves.

  Edward Hoagland

  Parent, One Day, Days Off

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• Offhand, the only North American writers I can think of who have come from a background of rural poverty and gone on to write about it have been Negroes.

  Alden Nowlan

  Writing, Thinking, Gone

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• In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

  Frederick Lenz

  Writing, Years, Style

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• Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Country, Rich Countries, Socialism

  Ha-Joon Chang (2007). “Bad Samaritans: rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world”, Century

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• When I was starting out, science fiction was a little genre over there, which only a few people read. But now -- where are you going to put, for example, Salman Rushdie? Or any of the South American writers? Most people get by calling them magical realists.

  Doris Lessing

  People, Example, Fiction

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• It is in this matter that I fall foul of so many American writers on writing; they seem to think that writing is a confidence game by means of which the author cajoles a restless, dull-witted, shallow audience into hearing his point of view. Such an attitude is base, and can only beget base prose.

  Robertson Davies

  Attitude, Fall, Mean

  "Elements of Style". Essay by Robertson Davies, 1959.

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• I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, Writing, Thinking

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• I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers.

  Lisa Scottoline

  Book, Writing, Stories

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• There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

  Bharati Mukherjee

  Book, White, Fiction

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• When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

  Martin Amis

  Typewriters, New Life, Happens

  1986 The Moronic Inferno,'Kurt Vonnegut'.

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• As a Vietnamese refugee who became an American writer, I can tell you that you matter, that your sadness matters, the story of how you survived and triumphed matters. For every story that belongs to you, in time, belongs to America.

  Andrew Lam

  Sadness, America, Stories

  Andrew Lam (2010). “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres”, p.133, Heyday

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• I want people to read good work. If I see someone reading a book by Lorrie Moore or Jennifer Egan, I'm psyched. If I see them reading X Latin American Writer Who Sucks, I'm not psyched. But in terms of news, I do think that's important.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Latin, Book, Reading

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• Salter is a writer who particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure. He is among the very few North American writers all of whose work I want to read, whose as-yet-unpublished books I wait for impatiently.

  Susan Sontag

  Reading, Book, Waiting

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• I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. Im thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

  Daniel Alarcon

  Country, Latin, Thinking

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• American writers, at least those of us who are fortunate enough to support ourselves in the field, are by and large a lucky lot.

  Bryan Burrough

  Support, Lucky, Fields

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• The most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction.

  William March

  Fiction, Underrated, Contemporary

  William March, William T. Going, Richard Brough (2011). “99 Fables”, p.20, University of Alabama Press

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• To an American writer, I should think it must be a flattering distinction to escape the admiration of the newspapers.

  Frances Trollope

  Thinking, United States, Admiration

  Frances Trollope (2013). “Domestic Manners of the Americans”, p.192, Courier Corporation

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• I've had the good fortune to read a lot of great American writers in translation, and my absolute beloved, for me one of the greatest writers ever, is Mark Twain. Yes, yes, yes. And Whitman, from whom the whole of 20th-century poetry sprung up. Whitman was the origin of things, someone with a completely different outlook. But I think that he's the father of the new wave in the world's poetry which to this very day is hitting the shore.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Father, Thinking, Sprung Up

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• I love Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O'Connor. I read a lot of American writers.

  Kiran Desai

  Tennessee, Truman

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• I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

  Donna Tartt

  Writing, Literature, Admire

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• It's been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among the most prominent of all the demographic groups claiming a piece of Barack Obama for themselves.

  Jonathan Raban

  White, Long, House

  Jonathan Raban (2017). “Driving Home: An American Scrapbook”, p.462, Pan Macmillan

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• Every time I make an American film I just trust the American director and American writer. Myself, I would never make this kind of film. For me, those kinds of films are ridiculous. They don't make sense.

  Jackie Chan

  Directors, Ridiculous, Kind

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• almost all American writers tend to overwrite, to tell too much. I get the disillusioned feeling that novels, today, are sold by the pound, like groceries. It actually takes a great deal more discipline to be able to leave out rather than to throw in everything. This means that you have to say in one sentence precisely what you mean, instead of saying sort of what you kind of mean in hundreds of sentences and hoping the sum total will add up.

  Rona Jaffe

  Mean, Discipline, Feelings

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