Old Midwest Quotes & Sayings

Being a military child, we moved a lot and we developed different vernaculars from moving from the south, to the Midwest, and seeing the world. Going from New York to California and from Jamaica Queens to the South, I was always the new kid, or had the army crew haircut. I expected people to pick up on me. My brother kinda stole all of my old jokes. He got his inspiration from me. — Joe Torry

It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The sins of the Midwest: flatness, emptiness, a necessary acceptance of the familiar. Where is the romance in being buried alive? In growing old? — Stewart O'Nan

In my life why do I smile at people I'd rather kick in the eye? — Morrissey

God is not a divine being or a magician, but the Creator who brought everything to life. — Pope Francis

Growing up in the Midwest, I was very close to my maternal grandmother, who, as a young widow running a small business in 1920s Kansas City, had known firsthand the old Pendergast regime and its classic combine of politics and organized crime. — Roger Morris

I was a huge theater geek growing up, and that was not the easiest thing in the world, especially growing up in Chicago, where sports are really the norm. I was always off to the theater at night, from 7 years old on. Friends there in the Midwest who could talk to you about the idiosyncrasies of 'Pippin' were few and far between. — Johnny Galecki

Christina Baker Kline writes exquisitely about two unlikely friends - one, a 91-year-old survivor of the grinding poverty of rural Ireland, immigrant New York and the hardscrabble Midwest; and the other, a casualty of a string of foster homes - each struggling to transcend a past of isolation and hardship. Orphan Train will hold you in its grip as their fascinating tales unfold. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

I left the Midwest when I was twelve years old, and I haven't lived in a small town since. — Mona Simpson

We live not, in reality, on the summit of a solid earth but at the bottom of an ocean of air — Thales

Coming from the Midwest, I didn't know about stand-up as an art. I just thought stand-up comedians were old men in suits talking about their wives. — Natasha Leggero

A promise means nothing...It's a statement of present want, not future reality. — Lynne Matson

And I'm sick of things the way they are, my many oddities, my limited depth perception, as if it's not bad enough I only see half the world, but it always seems to be the wrong half. — David Arnold

I was a college dropout, hitchhiking across the Midwest. That was part of the old, adventurous spirit. — Tom Brokaw

To me, the summer wind in the Midwest is one of the most melancholy things in all life. It comes from so far away and blows so gently and yet so relentlessly; it rustles the leaves and the branches of the maple trees in a sort of symphony of sadness, and it doesn't pass on and leave them still. It just keeps coming, like the infinite flow of Old Man River. You could
and you do
wear out your lifetime on the dusty plains with that wind of futility blowing in your face. And when you are worn out and gone, the wind
still saying nothing, still so gentle and sad and timeless
is still blowing across the prairies, and will blow in the faces of the little men who follow you, forever. — Ernie Pyle