#american

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us. ↗

— Richard Wright

#american #native-son #race #religion #us

Intuitively, she sensed Leonardo’s gaze on her, and she caught sight of him near the entrance to the balcony. He was watching her, though he should have been engrossed in the conversation with the two other people with whom he was standing, one of which was the redhead. Even from that distance across the room, she could sense his desire for her, and there was an answering pounding of the blood in her veins as their gazes locked. Maybe it was the kiss between Russell and Joan and the romantic notion of long-lasting love, but Alexa found her thoughts straying to memories of sharing passionate kisses with Leonardo. She carefully placed her glass of wine on the table before it slipped from her damp fingers and crashed onto the expensive white carpet. She felt nervous and jittery because she knew the reason for Leonardo’s smoldering scrutiny. She was fully aware of what was expected of her, and she found herself breathlessly anticipating the end of the evening. ↗

— Delaney Diamond

#delaney-diamond #interracial-romance #the-arrangement #love

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#characterization #propaganda

I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation. ↗

— Bret Easton Ellis

#bateman #bloodlust #bret #easton #ellis

The quickest way is sometimes the longest. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#fantasy-fiction #fantasy-fiction

I've always regarded it as a test of character to dislike the Kennedys. I don't really respect anyone who falls for Camelot. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#camelot #character #gore-vidal #kennedy-family #united-states

The workplace would allow parents to work part time, to share jobs, to take personal leaves to give birth, tend to a sick child, or care for a well one. As Delores Hayden has envisioned in Redesigning the American Dream, it would include affordable housing closer to places of work and perhaps community-based meal and laundry services. ↗

— Arlie Hochschild

#the-american-dream #work #dreams

The Open Road goes to the used-car lot. ↗

— Louis Simpson

#capitalism #freedom #frontier #individualism #liberalism

That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#freedom

Out of the Indian approach to life there came a great freedom, an intense and absorbing respect for life, enriching faith in a Supreme Power, and principles of truth, honesty, generosity, equity and brotherhood as a guide to mundane relations. ↗

— Luther Standing Bear

#faith