Whatever the country, capitalist or socialist, man was everywhere crushed by technology, made a stranger to his own work, imprisoned, forced into stupidity.
It’s true that what you find in New York is something other than America. Only small towns and small countries are self-satisfied; a real capital goes beyond its borders.
A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.
Families, like countries, take their prophets unkindly, but a verse-speaker in the house is dishonor to be hooted.
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert The student’s bower for gold, some fears unnamed I had, my Country – am I to be blamed?
We are one with God and He loves us. Now if that isn’t a hazard to this country-How’re we gonna keep building nuclear weapons?
I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it’s hard for young people today, don’t you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country.
You can write a great country record and still be angry. Who’s angrier than Toby Keith? He’s angrier than the average 10 rappers.
America, as everybody knows, is a country of many contradictions, and a big contradiction for a long time has been between a very aggressive form of capitalism and consumerism against what might be called a kind of moral or civic impulse.
If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.
There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
Families aren’t easy to join. They’re like an exclusive country club where membership makes impossible demands and the dues for an outsider are exorbitant.
One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.
The fact that Americans drag around the world by the busloads to glimpse the past probably has something to do with the youth of our country. We revere anything older than George Burns.
I feel I would love to close down for a number of years in some way and just be in the country making pork pies and chutneys and never have to poke my head out of the parapet.
This is a free country. Folks have a right to send me letters, and I have a right not to read them.
The writer in America isn’t part of the culture of this country. He’s like a fine dog. People like him around, but he’s of no use.
That’s the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long. Like our rivers, our land: opaque, slow, violent; shaping and creating the life of man in its implacable and brooding image.
Novels ought to have hope; at least, American novels ought to have hope. French novels don’t need to. We mostly win wars, they lose them. Of course, they did hide more Jews than many other countries, and this is a form of winning.
We’ve placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people’s rights. That’s how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.