Americanness Quotes & Sayings

Acting is like a high wire act. Your margin for error is very slim. — Christine Baranski

It was Lillian Bowman-now Lady Westcliff- dashing and radiant in a wine-red gown. Her fair complexion was lightly glazed with color from the southern Italian sun, and her black hair was caught fashionably at the nape of her neck with a beaded silk-cord net. Lillian was tall and slender, the kind of raffish girl one could envision as captaining her own pirate ship... a girl clearly made for dangerous and unconventional pursuits. Though not as romantically beautiful as Annabelle Hunt, Lillian possessed a striking, clean-featured appeal that proclaimed her Americanness even before one heard her distinctly New York accent.
Of their circle of friends, Lillian was the one that Evie felt the least close to. Lillian did not possess Annabelle's maternal softness, or Daisy's sparkling optimism... she had always intimidated Evie with her sharp tongue and prickly impatience. However, Lillian could always be counted on in times of trouble. — Lisa Kleypas

But they felt ancient and natural, like they were, just tonight and just here, alive in a time before Americanness. A time before any kind of ness. — Tiphanie Yanique

I follow my own advice: eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits, vegetables, and grains, and don't eat too much junk food. It leaves plenty of flexibility for eating an occasional junk food. — Marion Nestle

Disease, which had reduced the number to less than fifty persons, subsided; the oppressive heat lessened; and Indian crops of peas, corn, and beans began to mature. — Charles E. Hatch

Prom has all the elements of a popular story. It reeks of all-Americanness, tension, drama. It has romance. Pretty dresses. Dancing. Limos. High school. Coming of age. — Adora Svitak

We have a basic notion that unless we find a solution for environmental problems, we will not achieve sustainable growth in the coming years — Hiroyuki Watanabe

They expected certain things of her, and forgave certain things from her, because she was foreign. Once, sitting with them in a bar, she heard Curt talking to Brad, and Curt said "blowhard." She was struck by the word, by the irredeemable Americanness of it. Blowhard. It was a word that would never occur to her. To understand this was to realize that Curt and his friends would, on some level, never be fully knowable to her. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I felt my pride like a prison. — Vanessa Veselka

I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part of God. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

... "white supremacy" is a much more useful term for understanding the complicity of people of color in upholding and maintaining racial hierarchies that do not involve force (i.e slavery, apartheid) than the term "internalized racism"- a term most often used to suggest that black people have absorbed negative feelings and attitudes about blackness. The term "white supremacy" enables us to recognize not only that black people are socialized to embody the values and attitudes of white supremacy, but we can exercise "white supremacist control" over other black people. — Bell Hooks

As an American, I sit at home, watch the news, and make a series of assumptions about other countries. But news stories don't form the picture. They only give us license to feel some kind of political and economic superiority. And I did. On this trip, at this most joyous of weddings, I found that it's a dangerous superiority that swallows the three-dimensionality of their lives. That my guilt is useless and belittling. That the Americanness of my opinions mattered not more, but just as much as anyone else's. The outlines of a responsibility began to take hold: I have to talk about them like they're people, not news stories. — Negin Farsad