America The Beautiful Quotes

“The Voice of Tomorrow
America, America, will you listen to the story of you?
You bruised mountains, purpled by majesty.
You shining seas that refuse to see.
You, haunted by ghosts of dreams,
From the many, one; the one, many.
I am in you and of you, America.
You of amber waving grain, shining
Like fool's gold in a plentiful river.
I am the dream coming, yes,
The Voice of Tomorrow
Ringing in freedom's ear.
Do you hear it now?
Calling, calling, all:
Listen, America -
I am the story.
I am you.
I am.”
― Libba Bray, Before the Devil Breaks You

“our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“My wife, Sue, and I once set off on a 3000-mile journey from California to New York. We drove a black Chevy Suburban, the type they call SUVs nowadays. When we could afford to we stayed in shitty little motels just off the road, with biker bars next door and ladies of the night on the corner. I remember one motel where we didn’t dare walk on the carpet barefoot, putting on our shoes to walk from the bed to the bathroom, but mostly we pulled off at rest stops and slept in the car between the big trailers where no one could see us.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“And then one day we found ourselves in a cornfield. After that it seemed like the whole world was made of corn. It was just the same cornfield over and over. I got to thinking that we'd suddenly be out of it and the Manhattan skyline would pop right up on the other side. But that never happened. The corn went on forever. But eventually we hit the slave state of Missouri, with its constant panorama of rural beauty.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“We crossed the Mississippi and on to Illinois. At Starved Rock, 100 miles south of Chicago, we followed 40 or 50 bikers with ‘Bikers against Child Abuse’ as their colours. Next was Indiana, with foggy river towns and vast farmlands, Amish homes in Ohio with smoke curling from the chimneys, then 43 miles of unbroken forests and prime trout-water rivers in West Virginia. We stayed overnight and ate fresh game pie, although whether we were eating possum, rabbit or raccoon we never discovered.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“The refreshing serenity of mountains, streams and more forests in Pennsylvania gave way to small communities and the more thickly-settled towns of New Jersey. And finally, New York City.

It took us six days to get there, and as I crossed the George Washington Bridge I remember thinking how amazing this was. I was back in New York. A city that takes no crap.

I was back amongst Carefree Scamps who I could trust with my life”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“Autumn was a harvest of big-box stores and their back-to-school sales: fruit leather, instant mac 'n' cheese, and bread that we unhusked, crinkling, from its plastic sleeve. My mouth watered for the sweetness of processed wheat sown thick through gas stations from California to New York. Honey Buns and Wonder Breads, in perfect squares and machined circles, and the ripe weight of a Danish, mass-produced, that attempts no fidelity to the country after which it is named--- no country but this one ambered by waves of industrial grain.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

“How I still want to sing despite all the truth
of our wars and our gunshots ringing louder
than our school bells, our politicians smiling
lies at the mic, the deadlock of our divided
voices shouting over each other instead of
singing together. How I want to sing again--
beautiful or not, just to be harmony--from
sea to shining sea--with the only country
I know enough to know how to sing for.”
― Richard Blanco, How to Love a Country