Who is the most quotable American writer?
Nobel laureates share this ballot with newspaper wits and one gonzo journalist. The winner is whoever you actually quote out loud.
1Ernest HemingwayNobel-winning novelist whose stripped-down sentences made him the most imitated stylist in American fiction.1000pts
2Mark TwainHumorist and novelist whose aphorisms about politics, lying and human nature still circulate daily.681pts
3Emily DickinsonReclusive poet whose compressed verses on death and hope read like epigrams.681pts
4Maya AngelouPoet and memoirist whose lines on courage and dignity became modern proverbs.662pts
5Henry David ThoreauAuthor of Walden, source of endless lines about simplicity and living deliberately.661pts
6Walt WhitmanPoet of Leaves of Grass, whose expansive lines are quoted in speeches and film alike.600pts
7Dorothy ParkerAlgonquin Round Table wit whose one-liners outlived most of the plays she reviewed.600pts
8Flannery O'ConnorSouthern Gothic story writer whose sharp lines on grace and violence are endlessly cited.529pts
9Edgar Allan PoePoet and horror pioneer whose refrains from The Raven are recited from memory.529pts
10F. Scott FitzgeraldChronicler of the Jazz Age whose lines from The Great Gatsby are quoted at graduations and weddings alike.448pts
11Joan DidionEssayist whose opening sentences on California and grief are quoted as models of prose.448pts
12John SteinbeckNovelist of the Depression whose plainspoken lines on work and dignity keep getting reprinted.448pts
13Ralph Waldo EmersonEssayist of self-reliance whose sentences founded the American habit of quotable philosophy.353pts
14Toni MorrisonNobel laureate whose sentences on love, memory and freedom are quoted as often as her novels are taught.353pts
15Hunter S. ThompsonGonzo journalist whose manic sentences about America became bumper-sticker material.353pts
16William FaulknerNobel laureate of the American South, quoted for his lines on the past and endurance.353pts
17James BaldwinNovelist and essayist whose lines on race and America are quoted in every new civil-rights debate.241pts
18Kurt VonnegutSatirist whose deadpan refrains, So it goes among them, became a generational shorthand.106pts
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