Ernest Hemingway.
"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."
"It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters, in the end."
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody, is to trust them."
"The world breaks everyone and after they are strong at the broken places"
"Never mistake motion for action."
If you have a gun to your head and need to pick something Hemingway to read, read 'The Sun Also Rises.' If there is no gun, read it all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, bourne back ceaselessly into the past."
"Im a romantic, a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't"
"I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again"
"I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."
"The intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions."
Read 'The Great Gatsby', simple.
James Joyce.
"Think you're escaping and run into yourself, the longest way round is the shortest way home"
"A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery"
"I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday, or some previous day."
"Your battles inspired me- not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead."
"Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality."
Joyce is tough, dense and difficult. In the same vein as Dostoyevsky, Melville or Tolstoy. 'Ulysses' is a must, but if it's too intimidating or you're short on time, try the Audiobook.
William Faulkner.
"Facts and truth really don't have much to do with one another."
"A man's moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream"
"You don't love because: you love despite; not for the virtues, but despite the faults."
"You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore"
"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."
Honestly Ive never read Faulkner, and thats a mistake. The easy recommendation is 'The Sound and the Fury' his most famous, but 'As I Lay Dying' is top of my list.
Mark Twain.
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything"
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt."
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect"
"I was gratified to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know."
"Keep away from people who belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Hemingway said all modern american literature comes from 'Huckleberry Finn' so, yeah.
Note regarding the connections: These authors all have some primary affiliation, the non-american outlier is Joyce, though he credits Twain as one of his primary influences and Faulkner was never shy in his praise of the man. Despite being older than the three non-Twain Americans, Joyce also frequented Paris in the 20's. Known as the 'Lost Generation' Paris was a hub for arguably the most concentrated creative community of the twentieth century. Fitzgerald and Hemingway are noted close friends although the latter often disapproved of the formers love life. Faulkner on the other hand had a well publicized rivalry with Hemingway, who's understated simplistic prose frustrated him. If you absolutely could only read one book by any of the five authors, I would pick up "The Great Gatsby".