"Ruefulness is one of the classical tones of American fiction. It fosters a native, deglamorized form of anxiety."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: Anatole Broyard

• "A whole generation of writers dined out on the dialectic between original cultures and their ..."
• "Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth. "
• "His father, Vincent, took him to La Coupole in Paris and, after sitting on the ..."
• "If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's ..."
• "It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking ..."
• "Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words. "
• "People have no idea what a hard job it is for two writers to be ..."
• "Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city. "
• "She was a spendthrift of the spirit, an American in Paris when, as Evelyn Waugh ..."
• "The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives ..."
• "The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is ..."
• "The midnight snack of a life in its 70s. "
• "The more I like a book, the more reluctant I am to turn the page. ..."
• "The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back ..."
• "The tension between "yes" and "no," between "I can" and "I cannot," makes us feel ..."
• "There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play ..."
• "There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed ..."
• "To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The ..."
• "We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars. "
• "When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some ..."