Novelists From The United States

"Ampharete just smiled. “Might we go someplace else to converse? Much as I love this magnificent library, I do not feel completely at ease here—too many wise people walking about.” “Wisdom makes you uneasy?” Ampharete kept her smile. “When combined with prying eyes, yes.”"

"“Let us speak of Plato, and the picture he paints of people and their inability to rule themselves,” Ampharete began. This drew Heron’s attention from the sea. Mobs often make stupid decisions, on the basis of emotion rather than reason. Do you think Plato is wrong?” “Plato’s view that only the most wise should rule can justify any tyrant or group of tyrant who happen to be in power.”"

"Philosophers have an unfortunate habit of living a long time."

"Appleton was getting to the point where he could no longer tell if he was reasoning well or imagining well."

"Sometimes murkiness of motives can be mistaken for intelligence."

"Socrates grunted. “It seems the future may be more barbaric than the present, at least as far as you are concerned. Maybe those who believe the golden age is behind us are right.”"

"Ah, but what about persons in our society who are not members of our ethnos? I shall not mince words. We are not responsible for members of such groups. This is our society. We live here, and we shall govern here. We thus strongly encourage others to go and live where their own ethnos-groups hold sway. We see no need for them in our land."

"We will not tolerate either mongrelization or the proliferation of unwanted and unassimilable persons who can never fully participate in our society. Should such people refuse to leave, then we will enforce our will with whatever means are needed. No excuses, no wishy-washy hypocrisy! We will not be blackmailed info being the Great White Father of all of the unfortunates of the world! Let other ethnos groups care for their own, just as we care for ours."

"Christianity and the other Middle Eastern religions were certainly alike in one respect: they all sweated over "sin." The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead had a great judgment scene, Lessing had read somewhere. When you died, Thoth, the ibis-headed god, weighed your heart against the Feather of Truth. You confessed your sins before Osiris, the Lord of the Dead, and if you lied you were lunch for a crocodile-headed monster. Needless to say, this sternly moral scene was followed by other chapters that told you how to lie safely to the Forty-Two Judges of the Dead, how to con Osiris, how to fool old Croco-Smile, and how to sashay on into the Fields of the Blessed without anybody laying a hand, claw, or tentacle on you! Why did all the religions from that part of the world bother postulating an omnipotent, omniscient god who handed down iron-clad commandments—only to spend the rest of history figuring ways to bamboozle him? Must be something in the Middle Eastern psyche."

"What matters? What is worth establishing and maintaining? Survival. Only survival. Individual survival is first; then comes the survival of the family, the clan, the tribe. These are immediately comprehensible. Beyond them lie ever larger and more diffuse, long-term loyalties."

"At last Lessing could let go. The Thousand Year Reich had gone off the track, derailed for a space of a hundred and forty-four years, but now it was back on and chugging along strong."

"I cannot conceive of an ancient, classical, mediaeval, or 'legendary' world without some form of organised religion... 'Religion,' in some form or another, is so central to the lives of most human beings that it cannot be omitted, minimised, or ignored"

"If man has direct, hot-line access to God through prayer - and if God is "Good" (i.e. on mankind’s side essentially) – then what need is there of physical devices: weapons, crucifixes, talismans, holy water, and the like? On this one I pass. Go ask your friendly neighbourhood theologian."

"Tolkien had this Britisher's sort of attitude that religion is something you do in church, and... It doesn't really do that much to your daily life... Whereas I’d been living and working in societies where religion is just permeating the atmosphere... Even the simple villagers are behaving in ways that they consider related directly to religion, rather than secular politics or something like this."

"I lived in India for many years, and I often encountered very intelligent, sophisticated people who had absolutely no curiosity about how things worked or technology. In fact, there are many people here, myself included, who are not "scientifically curious" about how an electric motor works, how far away the stars are, or what materials make up their clothing, their toothpaste, or their shoes. We take some things as beyond the need for curiosity; other peoples take more, other, and different things as such. The tribal people I lived with in India saw the airplane from Calcutta to Delhi fly overhead every day; they shrugged, wondered briefly if it was a steel bird, and then went back to being totally uncurious about it."

"We American males make fun of each other, using jibes and sarcasm to embellish our conversations and establish bonds. When I did this with Indian and Pakistani friends, I got myself into lots of trouble! They have a wonderful sense of humour, too, but the manifestations and the "buttons they push" were VERY different. I have now learned to behave quite differently in their society. This is exaggerated when I deal with non-Westerners who have less exposure to American/European norms. Try kidding a Baluchi tribesman about his wife, and he’ll hand you your head!"

"I once spent three months in Hong Kong long ago – compulsorily: I had lost my passport in Singapore, and the American embassy people did not believe I was an American until they checked my fingerprints with Washington. I thus ended up in Hong Kong waiting for my new passport to arrive. I was nearly penniless and lived quite comfortably in a brothel in Kowloon – without the services of the girls, I must add. They were all very nice to me, and my few remaining dollars were enough to pay for rice and an occasional bowl of vegetables. I thus saw Hong Kong from the underside, as it were. When my passport finally arrived, I managed to catch a Norwegian freighter going home to San Francisco. All of this was rather jolly, and the British police in Hong Kong were understanding. Everybody seemed to think I was either an agent for the Russians or an escaped Nazi war criminal, although I speak neither Russian nor German. Just my "good looks", I guess."

"Socially and culturally, Tekumel is as complex – and as alien to modern thinking – as Byzantium, ancient Egypt, Tenochtitlan, or the India of the Mughals. [...] The discerning reader will indeed perceive elements taken from [...] Egypt, the Aztecs and Mayans, the Hellenic Age, Mughal India, and mediaeval Europe."

"Our study proved that 1 million new American jobs could be created with just a small incremental increase of support for Black owned businesses from a small part of the Black population."

"Blistering. Honest…[O]ffering clear-eyed perspective on how African Americans got to where they are today and what they can do to support black business owners."

"an effective probe into how African Americans spend so much money that overwhelmingly leaves their communities.”"

"I love the Christmas-tide, and yet, I notice this, each year I live; I always like the gifts I get, But how I love the gifts I give!"

"The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry; The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy; The books that people talk about we never can recall; And the books that people give us — oh, they’re the worst of all!"

"“A noble theme!” the tyro cried; And straightway scribbled off a sonnet. “A noble theme,” the poet sighed; “I am not fit to write upon it.”"

"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention."

"A blunder at the right moment is better than cleverness at the wrong time."

"They borrow books they will not buy, They have no ethics or religions; I wish some kind Burbankian guy Could cross my books with homing pigeons!"

"Advice is one of those things it is far more blessed to give than to receive."

"It is the interest one takes in books that makes a library. And if a library have interest it is; if not, it isn't."

"A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye."

"Of two evils choose the prettier."

"Youth is a silly, vapid state, Old age with fears and ills is rife; This simple boon I beg of Fate — A thousand years of Middle Life."

"I don't believe the half I hear, Nor the quarter of what I see! But I have one faith, sublime and true, That nothing can shake or slay; Each spring I firmly believe anew All the seed catalogues say!"

"He laughs best who laughs last, The wiseacres vow; But I am impatient, I want to laugh now."

"To me, love is like listening to an album. Some people skip to their favorite songs and ignore the rest. Other people listen to the entire album over and over until it's familiar and cherished and they know every note by heart."

"I believe in love at first sight, all of that. I’m a very romantic person. I romanticize life. How grim and sad is your life if you can’t mythologize it? Because life is hard. So I’ve always just tried to make a story out of everything. I don’t want things to be run of the mill. I want everything to be high stakes, more vivid than average: The most interesting people you’ve ever met, the funniest dialogue, the best sex, like ever. Because ultimately, this is a gift from me, to Black women."

"I’ve seen beautiful things and terrible things. Until you, I didn’t know that they’re two sides of the same feeling. I want you, Ricki. Actually, it’s not a want. It’s an uncompromising, inconvenient need. But it’ll ruin us both."

"Humor is so important! Life is absurd. It truly is. And in The Perfect Find, the characters find themselves in some dramatic situations that call for some levity – a quip, a witticism, a bit of banter. It’s very much a Black thing to use humor to cope with outrageous circumstances!"

"Most generally, it’s the idea that we should live in a fair, equal society that doesn’t oppress, degrade, silence, ignore, or disempower women. Nobody is free until everybody is free. Most importantly, any true feminism theory must be intersectional."

"I think the thing that I’ve learned the most is that I don’t always have to write exactly about what I know."

"Why did I ever pick up a pen?! It’s hard! It’s hard because you’re not doing it for anyone else. You’re doing it for yourself and you have to be the boss and the taskmaster and if you’re tired or struggling or have writer’s block, it’s very hard to stay on top of your schedule to meet your goals."

"Marilynne Robinson says she read Moby-Dick when she was nine. I wish I could say such a thing! I was reading horse books, dog books, the Baba Yaga stories in : my was my most treasured possession, but I didn’t read with much discrimination."

"In July of 1995, the Copa, along with the chic restaurant Antonia's, burnt to the ground in the traditional suspicious, middle-of-the-night fire. Built in 1917 as a movie theater, it had been wearily showing Deep Throat for a decade before it was transformed in the '80's into a glossy gay cruise bar."

"What would be the point to discuss the craft of Jean Rhys, Janet Frame, Christina Stead, Malcolm Lowry, all of whose works can teach us little about technique, and whose way of touching us is simply by exploding on the lintel of our minds. It is not technique that guided them. Their craft consisted of desire. We are American writers, absorbing the American experience. We must absorb its heat, the recklessness and ruthlessness, the grotesqueries and cruelties. We must reflect the sprawl and smallness of America, its greedy optimism and dangerous sentimentality. And we must write with a pen—in Mark Twain’s phrase—warmed up in hell. We might have something then, worthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us."

"My husband and I were on this protracted and tragic adoption journey. It was really hard and there were a lot of things that went wrong, so I decided while this is happening I'd write a book about it to make it more interesting as opposed to just tragic. It's definitely based on our experience, but not exactly our experience. You know, I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers [laughs]. I think I learned some things about it, how to be patient, a little bit, and I'm so hard on that narrator, that I got to see the worst of how I felt. My husband said this to me actually—he said I was taking this horrible thing that we were going through and turning it into something positive. I felt productive in that way."

"It's actually quite frightening to be an author and know the business side of publishing. I imagine it's easier to be in Iowa and not know what's going on with your book. If the industry had stayed the same, I might still feel in control of the publishing process, but sales reps' jobs have changed, marketing jobs have changed, publicity jobs have changed."

"Stark Young was a man of protean interests in the arts. Because of this breadth of interest, it is arguable whether his main achievement was in fiction or in criticism, since he excelled in both, but after immersing myself in Young's critical writings in the theater, I have come to the conclusion that Young was the finest American critic on the art of the theatre of the first half of this century ..."

"... when I just started this book I thought: Roth’s pretty much has it down on what the worse thing a Jewish boy can do but what is the worst thing a Jewish girl can do? Well: it is most likely throwing up her mother’s cooking. Food is identity, it’s love, it’s politics, it’s family. To reject that, and in such a self-destructive manner, is something I wanted to investigate. It also implicitly brings up the notion of privilege, which is also a stereotype many young Jewish women are saddled with."

"Scholes mentioned and quoted from the “Following the Plot” essay, so the first thing I did was get my hands on a copy of The Afterlife: Essays and Criticism by Penelope Fitzgerald so I could read the essay in full. I guess mostly simply, I took Fitzgerald at her word. In that essay she says letters had arrived that dangled the possibility of an inheritance, and she decided to make the trip to Mexico to see about it. She and were quite desperate at that point, living beyond their means in London, editing a failing literary journal, with two young children and a third on the way. ... Penelope and Desmond stayed together until his death in 1976. Her first novel was written to entertain him as he declined. Despite all the problems, I think they must have loved each other deeply."

"Consider the as houseguest. Is it a good idea to invite someone into your home whose occupation it is to observe everything?"