Men stood up in Parliament and pointed to the American facts. What had created the clipper ships? Not the American government. Not protection, but la… - Rose Wilder Lane

The county was listed as a rural slum, the land as eroded. When I asked to be shown erosion, the answer was, it is ’sheet erosion’ That is, the constant effect of rainfall on all earth. There was not an eroded ditch in the county. Every farm was well cared for, every house in repair, painted, cared for—simple frame houses, a few without electricity or plumbing, but many with both.… None of them wanted to be rehabilitated. None of them would speak to Garet or to me until we proved that we did not come from the Government. Garet was dumbfounded when men surrounded the car and demanded that proof; luckily he had it, by chance. And these are the people who are said to be demanding subsidies! That was a story—Communist Terror in Illinois. (The manager of the project was a Party member.) No editor would print it, of course. The truth about this country never does get into print.

Public debt is a new problem for Americans; a century ago, no one imagined it. Congress then did not know what to do with all the surplus money in the Treasury, and finally returned it to the States.

Writing fiction is … an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.