Classic American Sayings

#1. I grew up in the classic American-Jewish suburbia, which has a whole different sense of what it means to be Jewish than anywhere else in the world.

Natalie Portman

#2. When we think of classic American desserts, we tend to imagine apple pie and ice cream. However, the most classic American dessert of all might be the chocolate chip cookie.

Homaro Cantu

#3. I have Czech, I have Russian, I have English, I have Italian. Uh, what am I missing? A little bit of Irish. The Russian is Jewish. So I'm your classic American mutt.

Joe Lhota

#4. With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair.

Bob Shacochis

#5. Even the classic American main street, with its mixed-use buildings right up against the sidewalk, is now illegal in most municipalities. Somewhere along the way, through a series of small and well-intentioned steps, traditional towns became a crime in America.

Andres Duany

#6. My manager got the script for 'Under the Dome,' and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.

Alexander Koch

#7. When I was growing up in school, I wasn't the archetype of the classic American nerd; I was just different.

Andy Biersack

#8. I love Ralph Lauren, just as a designer. I still think he could make some better sizes with his clothes, but I like the idea of his classic American style.

Queen Latifah

#9. Mack Bolan is a classic American hero. Readers like him and I feel very good about that.

Don Pendleton

#10. Young. Goofy. Infinite.

John Green

#11. I admire American literature, both contemporary and classic - 'Moby-Dick' is just about the best book in the world - and I admire British literature for its insistence on dealing with social class. It may have been an influence.

Per Petterson

#12. Betty White's Sue Ann Nivens was classic ... She had done so much with that man-crazy character! Betty made every moment count. She still does. I've declared her an American treasure, because she is just that.

Gavin MacLeod

#13. I love Mickey Rourke. I think he's an all-American classic. He's great.

Bridget Everett

#14. It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

Jesmyn Ward

#15. The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt.

Rene Descartes

#16. Cotton Mather is one of those classic figures of American history who can't be left out. One has to explain him or explain him away, redeem him or denounce him.

Edmund Morgan

#17. But even that day, there on the porch, with Charles beside me and the smell of wood smoke in the air, it had the quality of a memory; there it was, before my eyes, and yet too beautiful to believe.

Donna Tartt

#18. He looked up grinning. This one is Bluebelle and that one, he gestured at the one that smelled my leg, is Flower.
I made a face. What is with you and the movie Bambi? He stood up fluidly. It's an American classic.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#19. As for the American child's classic problem - too much mother, too little father - that would be cured by an equalization of parental responsibility.

Gloria Steinem

#20. Mayor Walmsley is using the typical Jim Crow manipulation tactics to deflect the blame and guilt. He's a classic racist politician with an ulterior motive," says Ora.

Shaune Bordere

#21. Bryce smiled, all cocky fucking grin, leaned forward and kissed him. "Cocksucking 101 is about to start." ***

Riley Hart

#22. Reagan Declares
Firmness on Gulf;
Plans are Unclear
Isn't that classic? I don't mean the semicolon; I mean, isn't that just what the world needs? Unclear firmness! That is typical American policy: don't be clear, but be firm!

John Irving

#23. It could be said that a single person has written all the books in the world such central unity is in them that they are undeniably the work of a single all-knowing master.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#24. But I must own that I also felt stirred by an unselfish desire to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.

James Weldon Johnson

#25. Nat played away and never minded anyone, while his eyes shone, his cheeks reddened, and his thin fingers flew, as he hugged the old fiddle and made it speak to all their hearts the language that he loved.

Louisa May Alcott

#26. Countless millions who have walked this earth before us have gone through this, so this is just an experience we all share.

Ted Bundy

#27. Ralph Ellison is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison's work, Rampersad's text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life.

Michael Eric Dyson

#28. Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious.

Tom Shales

#29. Saturday night at my house, I often trot out classic movies and force the urchins to watch them. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I think it's important to teach kids about American culture, and films are certainly a big part of it.

Bill O'Reilly

#30. How much did you care about anything that went on in my head until it got out?

Lionel Shriver

#31. Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own.

James Joyce

#32. Your responsibility to be ready for the fight, never ends.

James Yeager

#33. [On the United States:] We are a wildly energetic people in our pursuit of pleasure, let alone in our pursuit of money, and we are very odd to look at as we go about our lives.

Martha Gellhorn

#34. For much of America, the all-American values depicted in Norman Rockwell's classic illustrations are idealistic. For those of us from Vermont, they're realistic. That's what we do.

Bernie Sanders

#35. The financial crisis was a classic case of the political class failing the American people. Twenty-five agencies were supposed to be minding the store during the financial crisis and every one of them was asleep at the switch.

Carly Fiorina

#36. The preppy lifestyle has gone global. We feel that our business has grown so well because preppy travels so well. It's all-American classic.

Tommy Hilfiger

#37. Britain has a lot of wind. It's our wind. We don't have to import it.

Edward Davey

#38. 'The Wire' really is an American classic, and I think that's something to be very proud of.

Wendell Pierce

#39. Why don't they just take him out?" I asked. I'm not politically minded, as I guess you can tell. Mr. Cataliades was smiling at me. "So direct, so classic," he said. "So American.

Charlaine Harris