Sad America Quotes & Sayings

I lie in a bathtub of cold water, still sweating and singing love songs to myself. I put the gun to my head and cock it.
I think of my Grandma and remember that old feeling of being so in love that nothing matters except seeing and being seen by her. I drop the gun to my chest. I'm so sad and I can't really see a way out of what I'm feeling but I'm leaning on memory for help. Faster. Slower. I think I want to hurt myself more than I'm already hurting. I'm not the smartest boy in the world by a long shot, but even in my funk I know that easy remedies like eating your way out of sad, or fucking your way out of sad, or lying your way out of sad, or slanging your way out of sad, or robbing your way out of sad, or gambling your way out of sad, or shooting your way out of sad, are just slower, more acceptable ways for desperate folks, and especially paroled black boys in our country, to kill ourselves and others close to us in America. — Kiese Laymon

America is still AmeriKKKa. rather we like it or not — Fee Scott

The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan's village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn.
In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie? — Thomas King

The sad fact is that today most of the heads of big businesses in America have become so confused or intimidated that, so far from carrying the free market to argument to the enemy, they fail to defend themselves adequately even when attacked. — Henry Hazlitt

When I watched the Twin Towers fall, I said aloud to my naked friend, "There go our civil liberties." A few months later I called George Carlin and we were chatting about America's reaction to the attack. I told him my thoughts. He excused himself, put down the phone, and went and got his journal. As the Twin Towers fell, he had written, "There go our civil rights." I was so proud to have had a similar thought at a similar time to a genius. We were sad to be right. To react to an attack on our freedom with less freedom seems so deeply un-American. What ever happened to Yankee Doodle Dandy and "fuck you in the fucking neck"? — Penn Jillette

When we think about millions of hungry children, we don't think about America. We relate the problem to other nations, like Ethiopia, India or Somalia. The sad truth is that one is five American kids is at risk due to poor nutrition. — Kristin Davis

The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seatmates' faces and revealed them as they were when they first came to the country, when they were young and America seemed conquerable. He'd watch that kind light suffuse the car like syrup, watch it smudge furrows from foreheads, slick gray hairs into gold, gentle the aggressive shine from cheap fabrics into something lustrous and fine. And then the sun would drift, the car rattling uncaringly away from it, and the world would return to its normal sad shapes and colors, the people to their normal sad state, a shift as cruel and abrupt as if it had been made by a sorcerer's wand. — Hanya Yanagihara

You've changed me forever. And I'll never forget you. — Kiera Cass

There are more than 300,000 families in the Gulf region that lost their homes and are waiting for peace of mind. The hurricane exposed the sad reality of poverty in America. We saw, in all its horrific detail, the vulnerabilities of living in inadequate housing and the heartbreak of losing one's home. — Harry Connick Jr.

[The media's] fantasy of an America bristling with racists allows them to portray any criticism of our massively incompetent and dangerous president as just another sad episode of oh-so-typical white racism. — Ann Coulter

Not only will America go to your country and kill all your people. But they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your people made their soldiers feel sad. — Frankie Boyle

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit. — Richard Attenborough

I am disappointed that after all of the struggles that we have had in this country for such a long time, trying to get through and beyond racism and bigotry and discrimination - I think it is sad. It just tells us the kind of work that we have to do as - as America, as a nation. — Bernie Sanders

It's a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens. — Donald Trump

America is a country of abundance, but our food culture is sad - based on huge portions and fast food. Let's stop with the excuses and start creating something better. — David Chang

They talk about prohibition in America. What can one do in a country such as that?
'What does one do in America when one is sad - without alcohol?' asks Zwonimir. — Joseph Roth

Most people in America don't believe that "God" is a dirty word, but the sad fact is that some Americans are left to wonder whether the Supreme Court might have greater regard for it if it was. — John Cornyn

Our society has come to adopt many of the draconian measures Orwell
tried to warn us about. Cameras monitor citizens from nearly every street
corner in the United Kingdom, and there are a steadily growing number
of them mounted on traffic lights in America. The fact that Orwell's 1984
remains a part of the required reading curriculum in many high schools
across the country is laughably ironic. What is truly sad is how many readers
acknowledge the brilliant foresight of Orwell yet fail to grasp how closely
present-day America (and England) resemble Winston Smith's Oceania. — Donald Jeffries

I wrote a techno song after I was deported. I was in America for a little bit, but then I was deported back to Germany. I was very sad. — Flula Borg

I belong in America more than South Africa. I can't remember the feeling of living there anymore. It's like it was in another life. That's sad in a way. It is my country. It's where I grew up. You don't know what it's like to have these negative feelings about your homeland. There are roots you can't escape. — Trevor Rabin

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. — Jack Kerouac

Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not in some ways differ significantly from the country that existed almost 50 years ago. This is truly sad. — Eric Holder

Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast and that the once-happy plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice? — George Washington

Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you're gonna have. It's pathetic. It really is pathetic. It's sad. We're living in the Dark Ages over there. — Sylvester Stallone

Now, where are [Mexican illegal immigrants] fleeing from? Mostly from Central America, where they're fleeing from the results of our policies. — Noam Chomsky

Oil runs America and it's the sad reality. — Cristian Machado

In fact, every place I've been to in Africa has a nice part, but you see the downside. Calcutta , parts of Central and South America , I've seen a lot of dead bodies and a lot of sad poverty and just obliteration. — Henry Rollins

Nobody reads anymore in America. Reading has become the least effective delivery system for narrative. That's sad because prose is the means by which you can deliver very complicated, nuanced explanations of problems and possible solutions. — David Simon

The sad truth is, John and I and the kids only took Route 66 once on our trips to Disneyland. Our family, like the rest of America, succumbed to the lure of faster highways, more direct routes, higher speed limits. We forgot about taking the slow way. It makes you wonder if something inside us knows that our lives are going to pass faster than we could ever realize. So we run around like chickens about to lose our heads. Which makes our little two- or three-week vacations with our families more important than ever...
As for the time that elapsed between those vacations, that's another thing altogether. It seems to have all passed breathlessly, like some extended whisper of days, months, years, decades. (pp.39-40) — Michael Zadoorian

This is the beginning of your life in America," Julio said. "We'll take a freight train from Sunnyside and go to nowhere." "I would like to go to California," I said. "I have two brothers there - but I don't know if I could find them." "All roads go to California and all travelers wind up in Los Angeles," Julio said. "But not this traveler. I have lived there too long. I know that state too damn well ... ." "What do you mean?" I asked. Suddenly he became sad and said: "It is hard to be a Filipino in California. — Carlos Bulosan

I feel like old age in America is a very sad thing. I have been many different places around the world where getting older is something you look forward to. — Alice Waters

Few countries have produced such arrogance and snobbishness as America. Particularly is this true of the American woman of the middle class. She not only considers herself the equal of man, but his superior, especially in her purity, goodness, and morality. Small wonder that the American suffragist claims for her vote the most miraculous powers. In her exalted conceit she does not see how truly enslaved she is, not so much by man, as by her own silly notions and traditions. Suffrage can not ameliorate that sad fact; it can only accentuate it, as indeed it does. — Emma Goldman

I mean, that's a sad day in America when you're recalled because you did what you said you were going to do, and the public voted you in to do that. — Russell Pearce

Jesse Owen was bigger than a black hero, he was an American hero. For me, I looked at it from that perspective. Through my research, I obviously learned a lot, much of which made me sad, upset, disappointed and even angry, regarding what Jesse had to go through. Not only was he a black man in America during an age of high racial tension and segregation, but he was also living in the middle of the Great Depression - it was very difficult times for him and his family. — Stephan James

It's difficult to be alive in America today and truly be in denial anymore. It's not hip to be unconscious or uninvolved. One of our great strengths is that we're an optimistic people, but that doesn't mean we don't have sad days. — Marianne Williamson

I'm seeing so much of America today, Luya kept telling Lowell in nervously accented English. It became a personal catchphrase for him - whenever things were not to his liking, he'd say that - I'm seeing so much of America today. — Karen Joy Fowler

That year, a middle-aged acquaintance asked me what my favorite book was and I said "On the Road." He smiled, said, "That was my favorite book at sixteen." At the time , I thought he was patronizing me, that it was going to be my favorite book forever and ever, amen. But he was right. As an adult, I'm more of a Gatsby girl-more tragic, more sad, just as interested in what America costs as what it has to offer. — Sarah Vowell

If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America. — John James Audubon

I was really sad after 'The Avengers' when I realized I was not going to have a part in 'Thor 2' or 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier.' But I'm not arguing with my fantastic plane and my really cool car. — Clark Gregg

If we don't make earnest moves toward real solutions, then each day we move one day closer to revolution and anarchy in this country. This is the sad, and yet potentially joyous, state of America. — Louis Farrakhan

Anybody doesn't like these pitchers don't like potry, see? Anybody don't like potry go home see television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes. — Jack Kerouac

Television is perhaps the greatest medium ever discovered to teach and educate and even to entertain. But the filth, the rot, the violence, and the profanity that spew from television screens into our homes is deplorable. It is a sad commentary on our society. The fact that a television set is on six or seven hours every day in most of the homes of America says something of tremendous importance. — Gordon B. Hinckley

America has become so tense and nervous it has been years since I have seen anyone sleep in church - and that is a sad situation. — Norman Vincent Peale

A sad figure (Bush) ' not too well educated, who doesn't get out of America much. He's leading the country towards Fascism. — Larry Hagman

Our generation, unfortunately, is stuck to our phones - and, like, Twitter - constantly, which I have no problem with. I'd say we're not describing the children of America or anything like that, but there is something to take from it: It is kind of sad how we can't go thirty minutes without checking our phone. — Israel Broussard

The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their
money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that
those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short,
of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which
those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is
directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be
truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims
and fantasies and sicknesses ... — C. Wright Mills

I find America falling in love with a TV show flattering and interesting, but at the same time a little sad. — David Schwimmer

I let myself be sad. I let myself think of him. — Kiera Cass

AMC [All My Children] launched my career and changed my life. I got married there and had my baby there and made so many close friends. I am so sad that it is going away. It is a part of television history. Pine Valley is a part of America. It breaks my heart. That role taught me how to really be an actress. It introduced me to a man who gave me my daughter. That is something that I am eternally thankful for and will always be. — Eva LaRue

There are nights when I think that Sal Paradise was right / Boys and Girls in America / Have such a sad time together. — Craig Finn

The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain. — Roberto Bolano