Famous quotes containing the words american and/or general:
“As a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and ... Europe develops a borrowed American idea backwards.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)