Quotes by American Authors - Page 106

But what I mean is, lots of time you don't know what interests you most till you start talking about something that doesn't interest you most.
J.D. Salinger
We grow up opposing our parents only to become like them enough to oppose our children who behave as we once did—a reminder of how dreadful we were toward those now vindicated grandparents. And you thought God had no sense of humor.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Small towns may revile you, but they have to keep you-they can't turn you away.
John Irving
…Henry is tired of winter,& haircuts, & a squeamish comfy ruin-prone proud national mind, & Spring (in the city so called)Henry likes Fall.Hé would be prepared to líve in a world of Fállfor ever, impenitent Henry.But the snows and summers grieve and dream;These fierce & airy occupations, and love,raved away so many of Henry’s yearsit is a wonder that, with in each handone of his own mad books and all,ancient fires for eyes, his head full& his heart full, he's making ready to move on.
John Berryman
The most valuable gift I ever received was the gift of insecurity my father left us. My mother's love might not have prepared me for life the way my father's departure did. He forced us out on the road where we had to earn our bread.
Lillian Gish
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
What do you mean, blindly? That baby is a very sentient creature… That baby sees the world with a completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in.
Tom Wolfe
Imagine this:Ice is coming to YOUR house.Can you HEAR it knocking?Are you ready?What will YOU do?
Cornelia Connie D. DeDona
That big chunk of my life that felt like it was missing has slid back into place. With him, I feel whole again. For the first time in a long time, I'm where I'm supposed to be with the person I'm supposed to be with.
Collette West
Southerners had a long tradition of looking for religious significance in even the most humble forms of nature, and I always preferred the explanations of folklore to the icy interpretations of science.
Pat Conroy
I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be able to find it in the poets.
Peter Kreeft
A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.
B.F. Skinner
I’ve often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that “normal” people also might never understand, and that’s what FURIOUSLY HAPPY is all about.
Jenny Lawson
An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Why would any writer in her right mind ever consider making a movie instead? That's like going from being a monk or a nun to serving as a camp counselor for hundreds of problem children.
Amy Tan
If we all discovered that we only had five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to tell them that they loved them.
Christopher Morley
The first time I called myself a 'Witch' was the most magical moment of my life.
Margot Adler
I would rather serve God and displease my flesh than serve my flesh and displease God.
Mandy Fender
The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
David Viscott
Trust is the action of faith.
Gerard de Marigny
Intuition matters but, pay more attention to the unconscious bias.
Pearl Zhu
Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks ofmen. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can'tgrab onto.
David Foster Wallace
The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.
Annie Dillard
Elizabeth who was only partially visible to her stared out the window very much awake as though she were contemplating the end of man.
Anna Godbersen
The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever.
Fritz Leiber
just as a stool requires three legs to stand upright so the taekwondoist must cultivate basic skills, meaningful forms, and effective sparring in order to have both feet firmly planted in the art
Doug Cook
You are free to go, Father," she whispered. "We are all of us free." Olivia finally understood what Mr Tugwell had tried to tell her. This was how it was for every fallen crteature. Christ bore the penalty we each deserve, to purchase our freedom.
Julie Klassen
Elisha,' he said, 'no matter what happens to me, where I go, what folks say about me, no matter what anybody says, you remember - please remember - I was saved. I was there.
James Baldwin
Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time.
Roger Zelazny
She had wanted more than she could have.She had wanted him, and more... she had wanted him to want her.In the name of something bigger than tradition, bolder than reputation, more important than a silly title.
Sarah MacLean
If there were ever any half-bloods who needed to worry about that, itwas Thalia and me. I wondered if maybe I should've sent Poseidon that seashell pattern tiefor Father's Day after all.--Percy Jackson
Rick Riordan
You know how sometimes when you're drifting off to sleep you feel that jolt, like you were falling and caught yourself at the last second? It's nothing to be concerned about, it's usually just the parasite adjusting its grip.
David Wong
When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child, then he will return, and not before.
George R.R. Martin
They are orphans again, with no true home but each other and whatever life they can make together on the other side of the sea.
Leigh Bardugo
He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the good place, and a heart-shaped leaf lay trapped in the hollow if his throat as though it were planned, though of course it was so perfect it couldn't have been planned.
Elizabeth Berg
The things you didn't receive added value to your life, the same as did the things you received. Life had holes. Life was still beautiful.
Becky Wade
The 'incredible frog hotel'—really a local bed and breakfast—...the frogs stay (in their tanks) in a block of rented rooms.
Elizabeth Kolbert
What's love if not the thing you'll do anything and everything to get back once lost? What's hate if not the thing you'll do anything and everything to get rid of once found?
Brian Celio
Dad got furious when we lied to him. No, Dad got furious then we lied to him.
Brian Spellman
The best way to transform a society is to empower the women of that society.
Debasish Mridha
Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to his moment which will tell if he is to die at that man’s hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man’s worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one’s will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.
Cormac McCarthy
The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment.
Nicholas Carr
[In mountaineering, if] we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the main point, and those who only wander in high places become part of the story.
Rebecca Solnit
During the shoot in November 2003, I was vaguely aware of the stylist’s sulky demeanor and eye-rolling vibe, but I blocked her out. Some fashion people are snotty drama queens; this is not news. Whatever was going on with her, I was determined to be positive and not get infected by her energy. Later, Fiorella told me that the entire time I was in makeup, the stylist had been clomping up and down the hall, sputtering into her cell phone, “I can’t believe I have to style a FAT GIRL!”tBelieve it, bitch.
Crystal Renn
With the practice of meditation we can develop this ability to more fully love ourselves and to more consistently love others.
Sharon Salzberg
No one is truly literate who cannot read his own heart.
Eric Hoffer
Sam enjoyed knowledge. The accumulation and distribution of facts gave him a feeling of control, of utility, of the opposite of the powerlessness that comes with having a smallish, underdeveloped body that doesn't dependably respond to the mental commands of a largish, overstimulated brain.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Have little,Need less:This is the wayTo inner peace.Surrender is a journeyFrom the outer turmoilTo the inner peace.PeaceIs in inner awakening,And this inner awakeningWe must shareWith the rest of the world.
Sri Chinmoy
The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer’s gasp.
John Pipkin
I wish I had another chance to write that school composition, 'What I Did Last Summer.' When I wrote it in fifth grade, I was scared and just recorded: 'It was interesting. It was nice. My summer was fun.' I snuck through with a B grade. But I still wondered, How do you really do that? Now it is obvious. You tell the truth and you depict it in detail: 'My mother dyed her hair red and polished her toenails silver. I was mad for Parcheesi and running the sprinkler catching beetles in a mason jar and feeding them grass. My father sat at the kitchen table a lot staring straight ahead, never talking, a Budweiser in his hand.
Natalie Goldberg
It was no mere accident you were sent to me, perfect synchronicity. Familiar souls wrapped in skin, brought together through time again.
Melody Lee
Not everyone can be bribed with meat, Oberon." "They Can't? Oh! you mean they're vegetarian.""No, they eat meat. It just doesn't sway their decision making process." "Well that... that's just wrong, Atticus!Are they Monsters? It's like they have no moral center!
Kevin Hearne
The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all.
Brennan Manning
We tend to view ourselves as this, lying in contradiction with everything that is not ourselves, that.
Chris Matakas
Be happy, but never satisfied.
Bruce Lee
...I realized how naive I was. My aunt Tina was right: this stuff does exist, and it does hurt people, and although there are lots of people at Liberty who condemn violence against gays--including Dr. Falwell himself--the number of students who want to give them the Goliath treatment isn't zero. In fact, the number who live in my room isn't zero.
Kevin Roose
She personified her name in everything she did. Even when we would row, her words were deftly chosen and spoken rather like an intricate dance. And I so loved to dance with her.
Lauren Cagliola Green
You could be Charles Manson, or Hitler, or even a lawyer who advertises on television, and your dog will still think you're the greatest thing ever. This tells you something very important about dogs: They are not very bright.
Dave Barry
The question of commonsense is always "what is it good for?" - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
James Russell Lowell
When someone is crying, of course, the noble thing to do is to comfort them. But if someone is trying to hide their tears, it may also be noble to pretend you do not notice them.
Lemony Snicket