Now they saw it — its newness, its raw crudeness, and its strength — and turned their shuddering eyes away. Give us back our well-worn husk, they said, where we were so snug and comfortable. And then they tried word magic. Conditions are fundamentally sound, they said — by which they meant to reassure themselves that nothing now was really changed, that things were as they always had been, and as they always would be, forever and ever, amen. But they were wrong. They did not know that you can't go home again. America had come to the end of something and to the beginning of something else. But no one knew what that something else would be and out of the change and uncertainly and the wrongness of the leaders grew fear and desperation and before long hunger stalked the streets. Through it all there was still only one certainty, though no one saw it yet. America was still America, and whatever new thing came of it would be American.
About This Quote
About Thomas Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe was a 19th-century American novelist. Thomas Clayton Wolfe was an American novelist and short story writer. He is known largely for his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (1929), and for the short fiction that appeared during the last years of his life. Read more on Wikipedia →