Quotes by American Authors - Page 1024

Anyone who's a great kisser I'm always interested in.
Cher
You should always be prepared to defend your choices, whether just to yourself (sometimes this is the hardest) or to your coworkers, your friends, or your family. The quickest way for people to lose confidence in your ability to ever make a decision is for you to pass the buck, shrug your shoulders, or otherwise wuss out. Learning how to become a decision maker, and how you ultimately justify your choices, can define who you are.
Alyssa Mastromonaco
12 Things To Ditch For A Great DayBlameGuiltWorryRegretResentmentEntitlementSelf-pityLazinessNegative attitudeFear of embarrassmentUrge to one-up othersYour comfort zone
Charles F. Glassman
She didn't want to. She loved you. She loves you now. Yes, she hurt you and she made a terrible mistake in leaving you. But your father made mistakes, too, and you will, as well. We all make bad choices - decisions that would better be left to rot in the bottom of the barrel. But we can't undo them. We can only move forward.
Tracie Peterson
To have a different life you have be a different person. You have to do what you haven't done. You have to become the person that fits that dream. But most of all, you have to realize that if you don't step into your story it becomes the moral of the story. Your inaction is a lesson you leave to your kids-- I was too afraid to change.
Shannon L. Alder
A comedy isn’t about being funny...a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.
Gary D. Schmidt
If we are going to touch the people of our communities, we too must know their sorrows, feel for them in their temptations, stand with them in their heartbreaks. Jesus Christ entered into the arena of our troubles, and He wept with them that wept and rejoiced with them that rejoiced.
Billy Graham
How do you live with yourself, Lord Arrogant?” “Very easily, Lady Difficult. I find myself quitecharming.
G.A. Aiken
The accomplice to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference.
Bess Myerson
Never think you've seen the last of anything.
Eudora Welty
With love, when you let it go, life finds the ways and means to grow.
Debasish Mridha
When moral posturing is replaced by an honest assessment of the data, the result is often a new, surprising insight.
Steven D. Levitt
It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' Ô, Why!Why can’t we leave this life slowly?
Roman Payne
You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you're not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that's going on. Try to make yourself aware of what's happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.
Bill Ayers
I keep thinking about a tale my nurse used to read to me about a bird whose wings are pinned to the ground. In the end, when he finally frees himself, he flies so high he becomes a star. My nurse said the story was about how we all have something that keeps us down.
Shannon Hale
Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty... and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.
Brennan Manning
Patience will be on our side.” “I once heard that patience is a vulture in wait to take out its prey when all seems safe.
Cyndi Goodgame
Your life purpose is not just one thing, nor just what you love to do, nor a role, nor a legacy you leave. Your life purpose is who you are 24/7.
Diana Dentinger
Until we accept that our children have much more of a risk of being sexually abused than drowning in a pool, being struck by a car, stricken with cancer, hurt by a vaccination, or diagnosed with ebola, we contribute to a culture of panic and ignorance.
Ann Brasco
The old adage that people only want what they can’t have or what they can’t tame— is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That’s really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time— that’s when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it’s in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don’t care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can’t have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into.
C. JoyBell C.
There's a Drunk Midget in My HouseAh, babies! They're more than just adorable little creatures on whom you can blame your farts. Like most people who have had one baby, I am an expert on everythiing and will tell you, unsolicited, how to raise your kid!
Tina Fey
Sometimes we miss our blessings in life because they do not arrive the way we think they should. Because our minds are so shallow, so limited, we think our blessings have to come a certain way and sometimes we miss them walking up and down the street. Open your mind: get your blessing.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
My first day of teaching, I got hit in the head with a bandstand & needed 4 stitches. Welcome to #NYCity teaching in the 90s.
Ace Antonio Hall
Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail, and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some are given a chance to climb, but refuse. They cling to the realm, or love, or the gods…illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is. But they’ll never know this. Not until it’s too late.
David Benioff
This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.
Jimmy Carter
There's so much love in this world.
Scott Stabile
Bravery and faith bring both material and spiritual rewards.
Preston Bradley
Kindess is a mirror which reflects the beauty of the heart.
Debasish Mridha
In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States – that included chaotic overall of airline security – and the exploding tensions in Nepal, friends thought it ill-advised for me to board a flight to Kathmandu. Yet my existence at home felt so tenuous and unpredictable that political unrest in Asia barely registered. Also, it seemed more important than ever for me to keep going, not only overseas but also in the direction of a more satisfying life. Somehow the two felt connected.
Gina Greenlee
I wonder if other mothers feel a tug at their insides, watching their children grow up into the people they themselves wanted so badly to be.
Jodi Picoult
Once an opportunist like Mickey, who took the argument when she jumped on some devastated wretch's machine and jackpotted that it was the "cash-ino's money" she was winning, Moon returned after her six month break with the view that the separation had somehow sweetened the honeypot. The sad reality, she quickly learned, was that she was not irreplaceable; as such, the Casino felt no compunction to welcome her back with multi-jackpots. Instead, it took her money everyday and did not once give her a jackpot so that she could say, "Ah. They missed me." Instead, all she could keep saying was, "Verr-y bed. Verr-y bed. Suck-ah all my money!
Hope Barrett
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Maria Mitchell
That which attracts the world must please and pander to the self-importance of man. The world itself is a vain show, and likes its own. Consequently there is nothing which so carries the mass of men along with it as that which flatters the vanity of the human mind. It may assume the lowliest air, but sinful man seeks his own honour and present exaltation.
William Kelly
I was unhappy there and going through a rough transition, so I was desperate for any friend I could find that I could talk to. I thought that's what he was. We had this secret from my mom, who I didn't like much at the time. It was a harmless secret, so I didn't feel bad about it. All we did was go to the movies and hang out doing fun things all day. It wasn't until much later that the warning signs began, but I was still too young and stupid to see them for what they were at the time. Basically, he was patient as he built up the trust between us. He became a close friend and convinced me that he was on my side somehow. He took total advantage of my ignorance and totally betrayed me a few years later, when he slept with me. After my mom found out, she went psychotic and all she gave a fuck about was what had been done to her. She didn't care about anything except for how hurt she was by what had happened. She blamed me and him equally, telling me that sixteen years old was old enough to know better. Even though I never initiated a goddamn thing with him, and never would have. Even though it happened in the apartment she and I had gotten together, that he was not supposed to be staying in.
Ashly Lorenzana
Japan likewise put her hopes of victory on a different basis from that prevalent in the United States. (...) Even when she was winning, her civilian statesmen, her High Command, and her soldiers repeated that this was no contest between armaments; it was pitting of our faith in things against their faith in spirit.
Ruth Benedict
Sidda can't help herself. She just loves books. Loves the way they feel, the way they smell, loves the black letters marching across the white pages...
Rebecca Wells
Her was interested in the shadow herself - how her mind worked, what motivated her, her essence, how she came to be. It was a fascinating phenomenon.
Erin Kellison
I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.
Paul Auster
Don’t hate on someone whose hard work placed them on the road to success, while your envy and ill-intent put you on a path toward failure.
Carlos Wallace
The shock of orgasm pulls you under the wave you never saw coming. It wrestles you to the point of exhaustion and allows you to breathe only when you’ve died la petite mort. When you’ve given all and received everything in return.
Megan Mitcham
To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.
Robin Hobb
And so we must dig in to see where raw words and fundamental sounds are buried so that the great silence within can finally be decoded.
Raymond Federman
How we prepare our food, how we consume our food really makes a difference in how our food satisfies us and shapes the role we give food in our lives. Is it something we stuff in to satisfy an urge or something we savor to feed us physically and sustain us spiritually?
Mary DeTurris Poust
. . . I realized with a growing and startling sense of clarity that the seminary was educating and training me for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the posture of this particular brand of Christianity toward the surrounding culture was one of enormous suspicion and at times hostility. It seemed that part of this evolving designation involved a posture of entrenchment and argument toward culture. But I loved culture. I loved the freedom to engage with people for the purpose of friendship and dialogue, not simply evangelism.
Tim Keel
Here,there,every where
mary dohning hahn
Can I try something?" I said. "If you dont' like it, I'll stop.
Aimee Carter
Your ocean of joy in not out there. Find it inside of you and swim there forever.
Debasish Mridha
I learned a world from each / one whom I loved
Allen Ginsberg
Heresy," by the way, simply means "choice." It came to mean "thoughtcrime," implying it was blasphemy to presume to choose your own belief instead of swallowing what the bishops spoonfed you.
Robert M. Price
Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they're attached to dollar signs - unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendants who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
Hunter S. Thompson
River had never lost his cool, not since I'd know him. That was the thing about River. He was calm. Calm as a summer's day. Calm as a gentle nap in the sun. Even when girls were fainting and men were slitting their throats in front of you.
April Genevieve Tucholke
(...) I let go, crying and unable to stop because God was such a dirty crook, contemptible skunk, that's what he was for doing that thing to that woman. Come down out of the skies, you God, come on down and I'll hammer your face all over the city of Los Angeles, you miserable unpardonable prankster. If it wasn't for you, this woman would not have been so maimed, and neither would the world, (...)
John Fante
The business of love is cruelty which,by our wills, we transform to live together.
William Carlos Williams
What's in a name?  The accumulation of reputations from all who've owned it before you.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Prolific irony - For 8 years, the finger on the button that could end the world belonged to a president who couldn't pronounce the word "nuclear.
T. Rafael Cimino
One sure way I can avoid facing myself is by refusing to look into the face of God.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Sometime I'm going to do an essay called 'The Virtues of Amateurism' for all of those people who wish they earned their living in the arts. The market kills more artistic people than anything else. It's a world of safety out there, for most people. They want safety, the magazines and manufacturers give them safety, give them homogeneity, give them the familiar and comfortable, don't challenge them.
Robert James Waller
The 2 prime movers in the Universe are Time and Luck.As the tag line of my favorite dirty joke would have it: "Keep your hat on. We could wind up miles from here.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
You change for two reasons. Either you learn enough that you want to or you've been hurt enough that you have to.
Kate McGahan
I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians…it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it’s not who you love…a man, a woman, what have you…it’s the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.
Al Pacino