American Short Quotes

#1. To the extent that the short story is an art, Sturgeon is the American short-story writer.

Samuel R. Delany

#2. It would seem evident, therefore, that the secret of the American short story was the treatment of characteristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its peculiarities and sympathy with its method ...

Bret Harte

#3. Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.

Gary Krist

#4. David Burnett was the son of Martha Foley, who edited the Best American Short Stories series. She hired me to work with David and her to read stories for the anthology.

Terry Southern

#5. Any room in our house at any time in the day was there to read in or to be read to.

Eudora Welty

#6. Our federal tax system is, in short, utterly impossible, utterly unjust and completely counterproductive ... [It] reeks with injustice, and is fundamentally un-American

Ronald Reagan

#7. It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere.

Douglas Adams

#8. Yet again, the family of a young black man is grieving a life cut short. Yet again, the streets of an American city are marred by violence. What we have seen in Baltimore should, indeed I think does, tear at our soul.

Hillary Clinton

#9. The choice facing the American people is not between growth and stagnation, but between short-term growth and long-term disaster.

Stewart Udall

#10. A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam.

Evan Osnos

#11. In short, the time has come for us as American and Iranian citizens to apply our mutual energy, intellect, and goodwill toward strengthening relations between our two countries, as their destinies are intertwined.

Cyrus Vance

#12. I live in a house over there on the Island, and in that house there is a man waiting for me. When he drove up at the door I drove out of the dock because he says I'm his ideal.

F Scott Fitzgerald

#13. We don't think well of our presidents when they are serving. Even Kennedy, with such a short presidency, was beginning to lose his remarkable appeal to the American people when he was suddenly sainted by death.

Charlton Heston

#14. I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his brilliant short story "Gold Coast."

Ishmael Reed

#15. Among the many queer things about the American economy is this: A writer can get more money for a bungling speech at a bankrupt college than he can get for a short-story masterpiece. What's more, he can sell the speech over and over again, and no one complains.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

#16. I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off.

Henry David Thoreau

#17. This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)

Kellie Elmore

#18. The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.

Will Rogers

#19. We need to cherish Father Sky and honor Mother Earth.Every THING has a purpose. Every ONE has worth. (Short story entitled THE PUZZLE, found in a book, Foxleaf Anthology, collection of works from authors in the Upper Cumberland, TN)

KoKo Nervelli

#20. In short, he was one of those early, daring manipulators who later were to seize upon other and even larger phases of American natural development for their own aggrandizement.

Theodore Dreiser

#21. The short story, on the other hand, is the perfect American form.

Tobias Wolff

#22. No man surely has so short a memory as the American.

Rebecca Harding Davis

#23. American decline is real, though the apocalyptic vision reflects the familiar ruling class perception that anything short of total control amounts to total disaster.

Noam Chomsky

#24. I love contemporary North American fiction and short fiction. My favorite writer is Jonathan Franzen, and my favorite writers of short fiction are George Saunders and Alice Munro.

Emily Perkins

#25. The American dream. Those three short, simple words encompass the hopes and aspirations of all the peoples on earth. The words are not only short and simple. They are also fragile.

Ross Perot

#26. Turkish-American relations are based on very strong foundations. Currently, we have a war in the region, which could not be prevented, unfortunately. We hope it is a short war ... with minimum casualties.

Abdullah Gul

#27. Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat (at Bull Run), the magnitude of the disaster which it had entailed upon the United States. So short-lived has been the American Union, that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.

William Howard Russell

#28. Interventionism is inextricable from the American idea. If the United States retreats into isolationism, it ceases to be itself ? a nation dedicated, however much it falls short, to a universalist ideal of freedom.

Roger Cohen

#29. Let's all understand that these guiding principles cannot be discarded for short-term political gains. They represent what this country is all about. They are indigenous to the American idea. And these are principles which are not negotiable.

Barbara Jordan

#30. In the short run, using militias might be the quickest and easiest way to improve order on Iraq's streets and uproot the terrorists and guerrillas who routinely attack American troops and civilian targets.

Alex Berenson

#31. Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).

Jerry Saltz

#32. His hair was short and parted accurately in the middle, and he had all the look of an American person who would be likely to begin his signature with an initial, and spell his middle name out.

Mark Twain

#33. Heavens protect us from the dress sense of American academics.

Neil Gaiman

#34. Is advertising moral? It is part and parcel of the American free enterprise system ... I challenge anybody to show any economic system that has done as much for so many in so short a time.

Morris Hite

#35. The American girl isn't ANY girl; she's a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species.

Henry James

#36. He found his irritation that the American memory could be short.

James Carl Nelson

#37. She's the latest freshest fruit of our great American evolution. She's the self-made girl!
( ... )
Well, to begin with, the self-made girl's a new feature. That, however, you know. In the second place she isn't self-made at all. We all help to make her, we take such an interest in her.

Henry James

#38. If you're an American reader, you can love short stories the way other Americans love baseball; this is our game, people! We have more than two hundred years of know-how and knack, of creativity.

Amy Bloom

#39. She then played a short 5-second clip of Gruber, saying the following, that a part of the Obamacare passed because 'the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.'

Alexander Viets Griswold

#40. There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.

Theodore White

#41. If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

Ned Rorem

#42. We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists.

Kevin McCollum

#43. The average life expectancy for a black man in an American city is something like twenty-three very short years. The reality of that had never fully kicked in before, but it did that night. And I thought, hell, I'm at risk just walking around.

Suzanne Brockmann

#44. 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)

Jonathan Santlofer

#45. We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might.

Theodore C. Sorensen

#46. Right before 'American Dreams,' I started to pursue these avenues, like short films and getting into a couple night courses to really study photography and cinematography, and the language of visual storytelling.

Tom Verica

#47. In 2009, I went to Cannes with a short film in the Kodak emerging program at the American Pavilion.

Ryan Coogler

#48. I started cooking 30-something years ago. When I was 14, 15, I was a short-order cook in a snack bar. That was at a place called the Gran Centurions. It was an Italian-American swim club my parents belonged to.

Tom Colicchio

#49. The wellspring for the passion that drove public speech and action in behalf of the environment was in large part religious and ethical. Environmentalism, in short, had become one version of nature religion in the lingering shadow of American transcendentalism.

Catherine L. Albanese

#50. If you're colored, you get the short end of the stick. If you're a woman, you get the short end of the stick. So what do we get for being colored and women?

Sherri L. Smith

#51. If they could keep out of jail for this short stretch, most would go on to be the spine of American society - fixing the cars, working the factories, growing the food and fighting the wars.

Bruce Springsteen

#52. I was a lawyer for 10 years - a short time, but it molded me into who I am. My clients were little people fighting big corporations, so it was a natural thing to not only represent the little guy but also to pull for him - it's the American way.

John Grisham