Robert Laxalt

“All of us together were of a generation born of old country people who spoke English with an accent and prayed in another language, who drank red wine and cooked their food in the old country way, and peeled apples and pears after dinner.”
― Robert Laxalt, Sweet Promised Land

“I reached out and touched him on the arm and said uncertainly, "They want us to come back."

Without turning, he shook his head and cried shakenly, "I can't go back. It ain't my country any more. I've lived too much in America ever to go back." And then, angrily, "Don't you know that?"

...Then I saw a cragged face that that land had filled with hope and torn with pain, had changed from young to old, and in the end had claimed. And then, I did know it.”
― Robert Laxalt, Sweet Promised Land