All across America public libraries were, and are, being shut down, while prisons-with libraries-were, and are, being built. This has been a choice the American public has been making for over thirty years.
Farid asked, 'Do American teachers care about every student?' I thought about a humanities teacher I’d worked with in Korea and more recently a science teacher I’d worked with in Germany. I said, 'I think most schools have a resident idiot.
Memory offers up its gifts only when jogged by something in the present. It isn't a storehouse of fixed images and words, but a dynamic associative network in the brain that is never quiet and is subject to revision each time we retrieve an old pictu...
One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose strenth alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Anti-Americanism may indeed have grown fiercer than it was during the cold war. It is a common phenomenon that when the angels fail to deliver, the demons become more fearsome.
A large American automobile came crawling close to us, and we could hear from behind its thick windows the deep bass of the radio, and the nasty words of a hateful song.It seemed like so much of modern music, a din to drive human beings mad.
He lies on the couch all day watching television. I admire his classic American ambition. He’s probably a better lover than me.
The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors… . The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor… . How beautiful is cando...
American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the ...
In Paris, the dance was everything. The dance of romance was what a man could remember in his old age. Didn’t all young Americans come to Europe in search of that kind of romance?
I’m a miner, and I’m always dirty, because I’m constantly digging. Am I shoveling for gold? Hardly. I’m unearthing this hearty land searching for the next great American novel. If I dig deep enough, I’m sure to find it.
I practice karate moves when I think nobody is watching. It’s all part of being a real American badass, I guess. Chicks dig it. I mean they would, if they ever looked and caught me in a moment of awesomeness.
I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.
The American and Russian capabilities in space science and technology mesh; they interdigitate. Each is strong where the other is weak. This is a marriage made in heaven - but one that has been surprisingly difficult to consummate.
If I’m going to write a book every American will want to read, it’s got to have lots of pictures. Those pictures must also move, and all the words in the book must be spoken and available audibly for all the readers to hear as they watch.
Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry.
The best parenting strives to educate children in how to live -- enthusiastically, compassionately, without greed, striving for a better world.
When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.
I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.
They got cream puffs at the bakery but I bet yours will be better,” he noted. “As Americans often put sweetened whipped cream or vanilla pudding between the choux pastry, and we’ll be making crème patisserie, this is indeed a fact.” “What�...
I am starting to talk fast now, and I have to remember to slow down because when I get excited, I start to sound like myself and my American accent goes away.
