If
we Americans are to survive it will have to be
because we choose and elect and defend to be
first of all Americans; to present to the world
one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of
white Americans or black ones or purple or blue
or green. If we in America have reached that
point in our desperate culture when we must
murder children, no matter for what reason or
what color, we don't deserve to survive, and
probably won t.
-- William
Faulkner
1897-1962,
American Novelist
America -- rather, the United States -- seems to
me to be the Jew among the nations. It is
resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied,
feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted,
over-friendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful;
given to extravagant speech and gestures; its
people are travelers and wanderers by nature,
moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords,
in ocean liners; craving entertainment;
volatile. The chuckle among the nations of the
world.
-- Edna Ferber
1887-1968,
American Author
To
be an American (unlike being English or French
or whatever) is precisely to imagine a destiny
rather than to inherit one; since we have always
been, insofar as we are Americans at all,
inhabitants of myth rather than history.
-- Leslie Fiedler
1917-, American
Literary Critic, educator
America is rather like life. You can usually
find in it what you look for. It will probably
be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
-- Edward M.
Forster
1879-1970,
British Novelist, Essayist
