#erica

What flaw could you possibly find in his appearance?" "His posture," Hannah muttered. "What about it?" "He slouches." "He's an American. They all slouch. The weight of their wallets drags them over. ↗

— Lisa Kleypas

#humor #posture #wallets #humor

You know what the issue is? Do you want to know? It's what these guys have decided to call America. They have the audacity to say, 'There, you sons of bitches, don't lay a finger on it. That is a finished product.'" "But any country is still in the making. Always. That's just history, people have to see that. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#diversity #kingsolver #lacuna #diversity

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. ↗

— Bill Vaughan

#citizen #cross #democracy #election #fight

The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal. ↗

— Peter Hessler

#conversation #intimacy #loneliness #solitude #talk

New York is made up of millions of different people, and they all come here looking for something ↗

— Lindsey Kelk

#love #new-york-city #love

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#imagination #racism #imagination

When the first of us failed at growing or herding or plowing the fields, we were told that we could sign a piece of paper and get money for the land, without anyone taking it. Mortgage, this was called, a piece of banker’s cleverness that sounded good to many. I spoke against this trick, but who listened to Nanapush? People signed the paper, got money, came home night after night full of whiskey and food. Suddenly the foreclosure notices were handed out and the land was barred. It belonged to someone else. ↗

— Louise Erdrich

#food

I believe much trouble and blood would be saved if we opened our hearts more. ↗

— Chief Joseph

#native-american-wisdom #non-violence #wisdom #love

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self- conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations are in a conspiracy to under-value them. ↗

— Henry James

#self-belief

(Media question to Beatles during first U.S. tour 1964) "How do you find America?" "Turn left at Greenland. ↗

— Ringo Starr

#beatles #geography #greenland #humor #media