Midwesterners Quotes

“In this he was like most Midwesterners. Directions are very important to them. They have an innate need to be oriented, even in their anecdotes. Any story related by a Midwesterner will wander off at some point into a thicket of interior monologue along the lines of "We were staying at a hotel that was eight blocks northeast of the state capital building. Come to think of it, it was northwest. And I think it was probably more like nine blocks. And this woman without any clothes on, naked as the day she was born except for a coonskin cap, came running at us from the southwest... or was it the southeast?" If there are two Midwesterns present and they both witnessed the incident, you can just about write off the anecdote because they will spend the rest of the afternoon arguing points of the compass and will never get back to the original story. You can always tell a Midwestern couple in Europe because they will be standing on a traffic island in the middle of a busy intersection looking at a windblown map and arguing over which way is west. European cities, with their wandering streets and undisciplined alleys, drive Midwesterners practically insane.”
― Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

“For me, a plain Middle Westerner, there is no middle way. I am in love with whatever is eccentric, devious, strange, singular, unique, out of this world—and with life as an incalculable, a chaotic thing.”
― Marguerite Young

“Rosie and Mary had taken only a 10 percentage of this privilege - they were three minutes late leaving their room and took the second bus that went past rather than the first just so they could feel themselves standing at a bus stop in Manhattan, New York, surrounded by people who were short, dark and voluble rather than tall, blond and silent. The fatal part was the bus they got on. They, of course stood, because they had been taught to do so, out of respect to everyone else in the whole world - they were from the Midwest and deference was their habit and their training.

......."Did you see that?"

"What?" replied Mary

"That woman."

"God, she was rude," said Mary.

And from that statement Rosalind knew that Mary would live the rest of her life in the Midwest, which she did.”
― Jane Smiley

“If Sibby were here, she would remind me that talking about the weather in this way is functionally the same as having "I'm a Midwesterner" tattooed onto my face. For my next trick, why not bring up a garage sale I heard about? Or perhaps point out that I got the bag I'm carrying at a fifty percent off sale, with an extra five percent deducted for a temperamental zipper? Would Reid be interested in knowing my opinions on mayonnaise versus Miracle Whip?”
― Kate Clayborn, Love Lettering

“A much larger covey hails from the stalwart states that begin with the letter I--like Iowa and Indiana and Illinois. Bred with just the right amount of fresh air, roughhousing, and ignorance, these primitive blondes set out from the cornfields looking like starlight with limbs.”
― Amor Towles, Rules of Civility

“We did it, Mom! I knew we'd pull it off," Emma said as she shared her scrambled eggs with Halo the next morning at breakfast. Since they'd moved back to Wisconsin, Halo had become a bona fide Midwesterner, preferring mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs to seeds or fruits.”
― Sandra Lee, The Recipe Box

“Things were pretty decent where she was, and she didn't ever see the point of bellyaching about the things she couldn't change, especially in a world that never once ran a want ad looking for a complainer”
― J. Ryan Stradal

“Maybe it's the unique people. Maybe the old-fashioned bucolic setting or the nostalgia it brings—he'll never be sure. But it's there he knows that his family truly became close. Of course, their end there was tragic, yet he knows those years were something else. Those years were the best of their lives.”
― Michael Dault, The Sons of Summer

“I was certain it would indeed be charming, but the Upper Midwest made me moody; people made me feel like I was being asked to speak a language I'd never learned and in which I was constantly misunderstood.”
― Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections