A Quote by Dan Chaon

Julie Orringer is the real thing, a breathtaking chronicler of the secrets and cruelties underneath the surface of middle-class American life. These are terrific stories-wise, compassionate and haunting.

Dan Chaon

Quote Topics

American American Life Breathtaking Class Compassionate Haunting Julie Life Middle Real Real Thing Secrets Stories Surface Terrific Thing Underneath Wise

Quote Author

Dan Chaon
American - Writer
Born: 1964

Intelligent, heartfelt stories that tell a whole new set of truths about growing up American. Julie Orringer writes with virtuosity and depth about the fears, cruelties, and humiliations of childhood, but then does that rarest, and more difficult, thing: writes equally beautifully about the moments of victory and transcendence.

George Saunders

I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.

Alexander Ahndoril

I would like to be the chronicler of something that I think is going down the drain very swiftly, and that is small-town, middle-class southern life.

Harper Lee

Americans are falling out of the middle class, not into it. And they deserve relief. I absolute support extending the Bush tax cuts for those who work the hardest and invest the most in our economy - the real drivers of American growth, the middle class.

Paul Tonko

I've made a professional reputation playing working-class, middle-class, American women. There's a real sense of stoicism and pragmatism and strength and lyricism of a woman like that.

Frances McDormand

Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all pretty much the same underneath.

Morris Gleitzman

I've got letters from all over the world saying what you're describing as American parenting is Chilean middle-class parenting, or it is Finnish middle-class parenting, or it is Slovak middle-class parenting.

Pamela Druckerman

The surface of American life looks smooth, prosperous, peaceful. But underneath, fault-line shifts in family and work life have led us into what some have called 'advanced insecurity.'

Arlie Russell Hochschild

The surface of American life looks smooth, prosperous, peaceful. But underneath, fault-line shifts in family and work life have led us into what some have called 'advanced insecurity.

Arlie Russell Hochschild

What I do believe absolutely is that in the middle of a recession, the American middle class and working class needs a tax relief.

Bernie Sanders

You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is manipulate that surface - gesture, costume, expression - radically and correctly.

Richard Avedon

The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow.

Germaine Greer

A thriving middle class is the source of growth in a technological, capitalist economy. Investing in the middle class is the most pro-business thing you can do.

Nick Hanauer

... I know for sure, that the universe is wise and compassionate. The question then becomes: How can there be such brutality and pain and such suffering in the world if the universe is compassionate and wise. The reason is we put it there. We create it. And it is up to us to stop creating it.

Gary Zukav

I was not from a middle-class family at all. I did not have middle-class possessions and what have you. But I had middle-class parents who gave me what was needed to survive in society.