Hawthorne Quotes

• Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken. Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.

  David Markson

  Taken, Europe, Trying

  David Markson (2007). “The Last Novel”, p.57, Counterpoint

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• Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.

  Alice Hoffman

  Dark, Thinking, Magic Realism

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• The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

  Susan Cheever

  Childhood, Allan Poe, Walt

  Susan Cheever (1995). “A Woman's Life: The Story of an Ordinary American and Her Extraordinary Generation”, Quill

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• Poe is a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.

  Leslie Stephen

  Delirium Tremens, Kind, Delirium

  Sir Leslie Stephen (1875). “Hours in a Library”, p.227

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• Nathaniel Hawthorne once said that easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Maya Angelou

  Reading, Writing, Easy

  Source: www.washingtoncitypaper.com

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• During 'Hawthorne', I was constantly trying not to be too outrageous and keep it serious. This has been so refreshing for me because it's such a good outlet for the inner me to just be. That's the whole point of 'Glee' anyways - to just be who you are and that's enough. I really feel that way on set.

  Vanessa Lengies

  Be Who You Are, Trying, Glee

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• I think that what happens is that all of my modern influences blend together with the older soul influences and you get Mayer Hawthorne.

  Mayer Hawthorne

  Thinking, Soul, Together

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• It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones. It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break -- these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Reading, Class, Symbolism

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• Blanche: No, I have the misfortune of being an English instructor. I attempt to instill a bunch of bobby-soxers and drugstore Romeos with a reverence for Hawthorne and Whitman and Poe!

  Tennessee Williams

  Bunch, Reverence, Blanche

  Tennessee Williams (1953). “A Streetcar Named Desire: Play in Three Acts”, p.39, Dramatists Play Service Inc

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• There is more suspense, more dramatic torque, in one page of [Nathaniel] Hawthorne's heart-racked ruminations onthe Christian consciencethaninall Demi Moore's woodland gallops and horizontal barn dancing.

  Anthony Lane

  Christian, Heart, Dancing

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• Goodness! Golly! Good God! Blessed Allah! Zeus and Hera! Mary and Joseph! Nathaniel Hawthorne! Don't touch her! Grab her! Move closer! Run away! Don't move! Kill the snake! Leave it alone! Give it some food! Don't let it bite her! Lure the snake away! Here, snakey! Here, snakey snakey!

  Daniel Handler

  Running, Moving, Blessed

  "The Reptile Room". Book by Daniel Handler, 1999.

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• Here eglantine embalm'd the air, Hawthorne and hazel mingled there; The primrose pale, and violet flower, Found in each cliff a narrow bower; Fox-glove and nightshade, side by side, Emblems of punishment and pride, Group'd their dark hues with every stain The weather-beaten crags retain.

  Walter Scott

  Flower, Pride, Dark

  Walter Scott (1821). “The Poetical Works: Lady of the lake”, p.13

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• The biggest names in the Transcendentalist literary circle visited the community regularly, and supported it, but they couldn't live there happily. Hawthorne [who was briefly a resident] left for reasons I'm sure make sense to you; he couldn't get enough writing done in a house full of people playing music, and arguing. It was too busy.

  Christine Jennings

  Writing, Circles, Names

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate.

  Adam Ross

  Goodbye, New York, Flower

  Source: therumpus.net

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• My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  Ishmael Reed

  Writing, Mirrors, Hypocrisy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Great books are readable anyway. Dickens is readable. Jane Austen is readable. John Updike's readable. Hawthorne's readable. It's a meaningless term. You have to go the very extremes of literature, like Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake," before you get a literary work that literally unreadable.

  Julian Barnes

  Book, Literature, Term

  "Conversation: Julian Barnes, Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize". "Art Beat" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. November 8, 2011.

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• Do you know what the lurid intermixture of complicated emotions produces, according to Nathaniel Hawthorne? That's right, it produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions. Ryan MacDonald's glorious shards of prose are both lurid and blazing, and together they comprise an anthology of complex feelings-dream-like, vivid, and never, ever obvious.

  Chris Bachelder

  Dream, Feelings, Together

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• I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either.

  John Updike

  Real, Past, Hay Fever

  London Observer, March 25, 1979.

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• The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."

  Gore Vidal

  United States, Purpose, Admirable

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• [Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

  D. H. Lawrence

  America, Deceit, Literature

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• Most thoughtful Americans of today seem to have forgotten how strongly their own and immediate predecessors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Whitman, were still preoccupied with the essence behind things.

  Johan Huizinga

  Thoughtful, America, Essence

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• The American, who up to the present day, has evinced, in Literature, the largest brain with the largest heart, that man is Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Men, Brain

  Herman Melville (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Herman Melville (Illustrated)”, p.5137, Delphi Classics

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• Had he learned nothing from all those years of teaching Hawthorne? Through story after story he'd led his boys to consider the folly of obsession with purity - its roots sunk deep in pride, flowering condemnation and violence against others and self.

  Tobias Wolff

  Teaching, Pride, Boys

  Tobias Wolff (2004). “Old School”, p.193, Vintage

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• There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.

  Herman Melville

  Lying, Men, Europe

  Herman Melville, Lynn Horth (1993). “Correspondence”, p.186, Northwestern University Press

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• Mayer Hawthorne's old school pop-R&B homages are so meticulous that it's tempting to overrate his pipes.

  Chuck Eddy

  School, Meticulous, Pops

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