“In a lot of ways that poor little potato – Evan pointed directly at Jade’s French fries – symbolizes the reckless consumerism that plagues America.”
“For four centuries now, the American people have resigned themselves to natural disasters and acts of God: floods, prairie fires, blizzards, tornados, hurricanes, dust bowls, epidemics, academics, lawyers, and politicians.”
“If America runs on Dunkin , do I detect a slight limp?”
“America: Land of the free and home of the gun. We are not brave, we are cowards, or we would have done something, anything after Newtown. Instead we did Nothing.”
“The reason we can say anything we want in America is that we know it makes no difference.”
“In case nobody has told you, she said, this is the United States of America, where nobody has a right to rely on anybody else--where everybody learns to make his or her own way.”
“If America is to be strong in the future, Americans must see America as home, not divided by race or region. Build American jobs for the future and come together with compassion to solve problems.”
“They play, said the old man. Every week the anglos play a game to celebrate who they are. He stopped, raised his cane and fanned the air. One of them whacks it, then sets off like it was a trip around the world, to every one of the bases out there, you know the anglos have bases all over the world, right? Well the one who whacked it runs from one to the next while the others keep taking swings to distract their enemies, and if he doesn t get caught he makes it home and his people welcome him with open arms and cheering.”
“We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians, those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ.”
“Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.”
“The Victrola, the Movies, a lecture: such are the three American alternatives to Silence, Scandal and Squabble. Or else, get drunk. America knows no other devices to enable its inhabitants to endure either their own company or that of their fellow-creatures.”
“Prosperity is always built on slave labor. Ask any Ameri-can t. Or Bulgari-can. Yes, we can, eat from a trash can...”
“Not only was it impossible to truly belong in America, but he didn t fit in here anymore either. He was a dweller of two lands, accepted by none.”
“A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights)”
“In America the vast spaces accentuate the vast spaces between people, deserts which stretch between human beings. It is a void which has to be spanned by the automobile. It takes an hour to reach a movie, two hours to reach a friend. So the coyotes howl and wail at the awful emptiness of mountains, deserts, hills.”
“I am groping about through this American forest of prejudice and proscription, determined to find some form of civilization where all men will be accepted for what they are worth.”
“I love America for its bourgeois comfort. If I was as heavily in debt as they are, I wouldn t be drinking tea or coffee anywhere. I would be sipping tap water from an old bottle and serving others tea or coffee in a cafe somewhere.”