American Writer Quotes - Page 3

• The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.

  Edward Abbey

  College, London, Mark

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

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• Stephen [King], who wrote the script himself, was on the set [of The Stand], and I was just so fortunate to get to know him. What a wonderful man. He may go down in history as the greatest American writer, pound for pound.

  Rob Lowe

  Kings, Men, May

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War.

  Adam Hochschild

  War, Political, Partisans

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.

  Norman Lear

  Two, African American, Green

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• My friend, Dennis Mathis, was reading Eastern European and Japanese experimental writers, and I brought the Latin American writers to his attention, so we exchanged books and bounced off one another.

  Sandra Cisneros

  Latin, Book, Reading

  "Talking in Our Pajamas". Interview with Ruth Behar, quod.lib.umich.edu. Summer, 2008.

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• African American writers and artists, by the very nature of what they do, will actually enhance or bring together people in a way that might be very, very healthy.

  Jerry Pinkney

  Artist, People, African American

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

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• Incidentally, I am intrigued by how many European and Latin American writers expressed their political views in the columns they routinely wrote or write in the popular press, like Saramago, Vargas Llosa, and Eco. This strikes me as one way of avoiding opinionated fiction, and allowing your imagination a broader latitude. Similarly, fiction writers from places like India and Pakistan are commonly expected to provide primers to their country's histories and present-day conflicts. But we haven't had that tradition in Anglo-America.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Country, Latin, Writing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Writers like Twain, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Russell Banks, Carolyn Chute, Alice Walker, so many others that I read coming up as a writer, that helped form my ideas of what it means to be American - and an American writer. I'm always in conversation with them.

  Micah Perks

  Mean

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Despite the obstacles of race and class, I was always taught that I could accomplish anything I set my mind to. African-American writers, for me, were a beacon, a guiding force.

  Clarence Major

  Mind, Obstacles, Accomplish

  Source: therumpus.net

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• With My Dog-Eyes by Hilda Hilst got more exposure and reached far more readers than I ever expected. Even my editor at Melville House, who championed the project form the outset, told me she was surprised by the response. After this, editors began asking my opinion about which Latin American writers ought to be translated. I realized I had some cultural capital to spend, and I wanted to use it to introduce another author who might be considered a risk by conventional publishers. Michael Noll was at the top of my list.

  Adam Morris

  Latin, House, Risk

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Jorge Luis Borges was lamenting a variety of Orientalism that was used to measure the alleged authenticity of Argentine and Latin American writers in the midcentury. The Argentine literary tradition was believed by many, including many Argentines, to be concerned with a national imaginary in which the gauchos and the pampas and the tango were fundamental tropes. Borges, in part to legitimize his own Europhilia, correctly pointed out that expecting writers to engage with these romantic nationalist tropes was arbitrary and limiting, a genre that was demonstrative of its own artificiality.

  Adam Morris

  Latin, Authenticity, Tradition

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'm an African-American writer, I'm a lazy writer, I'm a writer who likes to watch The Wire, I'm a writer who likes to eat a lot of steak.

  Colson Whitehead

  Lazy, Wire

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Twenty years ago, when I started writing, I didn't define myself as an African-American writer. And then you write books and you're focused on what's inside your books, and that kind of term is generally used on the outside, by the critical establishment.

  Colson Whitehead

  Book, Writing, Kind

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Things have changed in Latin America now. We mostly have democratic governments in Latin America, so the position of the writer has changed. It is not as Neruda used to say, that a Latin American writer walks around with the body of his people on his back. Now, we have citizens, we have public means of expression, political parties, congress, unions. So, the writer's position has changed, we now consider ourselves to be citizens - not spokespeople for everybody - but citizens that participate in the political and social process of the country.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Country, Latin, Party

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel García Márquez, José Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Kings, Latin, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are dozens of great American writers who write about the family.

  William Nicholson

  Writing, Dozen, Great American

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• Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. I'm a writer who's been strongly influenced by European precedents. I'm a writer who feels very close to literary practice in India - which I go to quite often - and to writers over there.

  Teju Cole

  Practice, Long, African American

  "Teju Cole on the 'Empathy Gap' and Tweeting Drone Strikes". Interview with Sarah Zhang, www.motherjones.com. March 6, 2013.

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• I'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American.

  John Rechy

  Gay, Men, Long

  "'I'm a Writer Who Hustled, Not a Hustler Who Wrote': An Interview With John Rechy". Interview with June Thomas, www.slate.com. December 9, 2013.

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• When you translate the American writers who are best with dialogue into German - someone like Elmore Leonard, or Tom Wolfe, who's also quite good with dialogue. It's very hard to translate them well.

  Daniel Kehlmann

  Dialogue, Wells, Translate

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

  James Thurber

  Writing, Years, Sober

  Quoted in NeilT Jones (ed) A Book of Days for the Literary Year (1984).

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• I have a well-balanced show. It's 50/50 on men/women, and also African-American/white writers, it's the same thing. I have four African-American writers, and four non-African-American writers.

  Wanda Sykes

  Men, White, African American

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining.

  Edward Abbey

  Speaks Out, Shopping, Rivers

  Edward Abbey (1988). “One Life at a Time, Please”, p.172, Macmillan

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• The Guild is the authoritative voice of American writers.

  Scott Turow

  Voice, Guilds

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• Jorge Luis Borges had the soapbox and the authority to complain about this myopic understanding of the duty of Latin American writers, which sometimes forecloses their unique modernism and experience of modernization in favor of a mythic past or an artificially constructed ideal national subject. So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn't expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.

  Adam Morris

  Football, Latin, Unique

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Fantasy doesn't have to be fantastic. American writers in particular find this much harder to grasp. You need to have your feet on the ground as much as your head in the clouds. The cute dragon that sits on your shoulder also craps all down your back, but this makes it more interesting because it gives it an added dimension.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cute, Writing, Clouds

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