Eileen Myles Quotes

The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives, and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

I tell people, 'I'm American. I act.'

We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in the mirror, stick out our chests, suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans,' and smile.

American cinema tends to express a patriotic relationship to national identity on a regular basis.

I'm very American.

There's intense national feeling in America that could be called patriotism.

I am an American in every fiber of my body and in every heartbeat.

Well, I think when you come here and wave a Mexican flag in our face in a country that's giving a lot of these people an opportunity that they've never had before, I think a lot of Americans are insulted, whether they're first-, second-, third-, fourth- or fifth-generation Americans.

I'm Australian! How much more alpha can you get?

Generally speaking, they [Americans] are not a people we should be proud to acknowledge as our relations.

Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty .... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American!

I'm a Ford, not a Lincoln ... I am proud—very proud—to be one of 200 million Americans.

I've always had a complex relationship towards my identity as an American.

An apology for America's values is never the right course.

The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying 'we' when referring to the United States and, even the 'shock and awe' of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable.

American patriotism is now jingoism. American Greatness is made fun of. The concept of "Make America Great Again" or American exceptionalism is lampooned. It is impugned. It is attacked. The effort to globalize our society and make us feel, as many of us as possible, that there's nothing special about being an American, that we ought to think of ourselves as citizens of the world, and in that context America is a problem because we have too much, we've done too much, we owe too much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Nationalism has two fatal charms for its devotees: It presupposes local self-sufficiency, which is a pleasant and desirable condition, and it suggests, very subtly, a certain personal superiority by reason of one's belonging to a place which is definable and familiar, as against a place that is strange, remote.

I get always a little uptight when I hear politicians say how exceptional America is.

America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.

Nationalism: One of the effective ways in which the modern man escapes life's ethical problems.

There is an essential goodness in Americans. They love this country.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.