Quotes by American Authors - Page 1070

But you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude.
William S Burroughs
Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.
Tracy Chevalier
In the United States, there was no simpler, more agreeable time.
Sarah Vowell
The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.
Joyce Carol Oates
I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller
I like to go to Starbucks and watch the intellectuals. I observe them and their intellectualness. They in turn observe me drinking coffee and being a creeper.
Ryan Lilly
Nothing turned a man on faster than a woman that couldn't get enough of what he had to offer.
Rose Wynters
Sometimes you have to go 'yippee-ki-yay' on a person who deserves it.
Naima Simone
When it's all over and the dust from our Ancestors bodies and our own settle from the four winds only then will we see that we were here!
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Some people think that it’s okay to be downright nasty to people they love. It is not okay. Nasty is never called for, and it’s certainly not sweet, useful, nor positive.
Cathy Burnham Martin
...but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales.
Will Durant
You. Aren’t you one of those Morgan boys? You must be the bad one.
Teri Anne Stanley
Sometimes you gotta let go. It's hard to walk away from something you love, really hard. But there are times when it's the only sensible thing to do.
Marlene Banks
Suddenly William loomed over him, scowling, snarling and bloody, his suit dirt-stained and ripped. “Do you know. How many strands. Of hair I lost. On my way down?”Whatever. “Math was never my thing, but I’m gonna say you lost…a lot.”Electric-blues glittered with menace. “You are a cruel, sadistic bastard. My hair needs TLC and you…you… Damn you! I’ve gutted men for less.”“I know. I’ve watched you.” Paris lumbered to his feet and scanned the rocky bank they stood upon, the crimson ocean lapping and bubbling in every direction. The drawbridge was only a fifty-yard dash away. “Don’t kill the messenger, but I’m thinking you should change your dating profile to balding.”Masculine cheeks went scarlet as the big bad warrior struggled for a comeback.… “One of these days you’re going to wake up,” William finally said, “and I will have shaved you. Everywhere.”“Won’t make a difference. Women will still want me. But you know what else? What I did to you wasn’t cruel, Willy.” He offered the warrior a white-flag grin. A trick. A lie. “This, however, is.”He grabbed William by the wrist, swung the man around and around before at last releasing him and hurling his body directly onto the bridge.
Gena Showalter
One by one the angels had come to the top of Har Megiddo where I sat, holding her body close to mine after she'd died. I'd fought alongside them in battle, but up close, when they stood quietly watching us, they looked as beautiful as they looked unreal. the angels weren't supposed to feel emotions, but they were all weeping. All of them. Their tear stained their flawless faces like rain running in rivulets across stone. Azrael was the only one of then who came to me, knelt in front of me and took her from my arms. He was the angel of death come to carry his sister home. I din't want to give her up, knowing it would be the last time I ever saw her face. I had died on that wretched hill with her.
Courtney Allison Moulton
Death has his favorites, like anyone. Those who are beloved of Death will not die.
Holly Black
When he admires the man he calls his father--a man who is slightly above 'the scum of the earth', what does that say about the man who admire him?
Terry a O'Neal
They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though barefoot, and the baggy apparel Mrs. Lisbon bought for her only increased her appeal, as though after undressing she had put on whatever was handy. In corduroys her thighs rubbed together, buzzing, and there was always at least one untidy marvel to unravel him: an untucked shirttail, a sock with a hole, a ripped seam showing underarm hair. She carted her books from class to class but never opened them. Her pens and pencils were as temporary as Cinderella's broom. When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one.
Jeffrey Eugenides
I love my virginity to the apocalypse.
Scott Westerfeld
Like prepositional phrases, certain structural arrangements in English are much more important than the small bones of grammar in its most technical sense. It really wouldn't matter much if we started dropping the s from our plurals. Lots of words get along without it anyway, and in most cases context would be enough to indicate number. Even the distinction between singular and plural verb forms is just as much a polite convention as an essential element of meaning. But the structures, things like passives and prepositional phrases, constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow.
Richard Mitchell
Parsely is gharsley.
Ogden Nash
Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself and you begin to follow your own instincts-only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied and when you are other people tend to be satisfied by what you do.
Raquel Welch
Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth
Gore Vidal
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
Wilhelm Reich
When suffering comes, learn to trust each day into God’s hands . . . let your lips be filled with prayer and praise.
Billy Graham
Her smile was like a Samuel Beckett play - easy to read but difficult to interpret.
Bob Smith
I figured I had kept her from being too depressed after fucking--it's hard for a girl with any force in her and any brains to accept the whole thing of fucking, of being fucked without trying to turn it on its end, so that she does some fucking, or some fucking up; I mean, the mere power of arousing the man so he wants to fuck isn't enough; she wants him to be willing to die in order to fuck. There's a kind of strain or intensity women are bred for, as beasts, for childbearing when childbearing might kill them, and child rearing when the child might die at any moment: it's in women to live under that danger, with that risk, that close to tragedy, with that constant taut or casual courage. They need death and nobility near. To be fucked when there's no drama inherent in it, when you're not going to rise to a level of nobility and courage forever denied the male, is to be cut off from what is inherently female, bestially speaking.
Harold Brodkey
He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks -- just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: "shadow play"].
Henry James
The purpose of education is not to validate ignorance but to overcome it
Lawrence M. Krauss
There are two kinds of people in the world. There are eggers and lightkeepers. The former are driven by acquisition and avarice. The latter are driven by curiosity and caution. Eggers take what they can, consequences be damned. Lightkeepers take what they need, nothing more. Eggers want to have. Lightkeepers want to be.
Abby Geni
Valentine's Day is the poet's holiday.
Ted Kooser
It is often the failure who is the pioneer in new lands new undertakings and new forms of expression.
Eric Hoffer
As long as it’s an every man for himself kind of world, men will always be for themselves. - Mayor Bentley in 'Tilt
Ashley Chappell
The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you're fussing that he's tied you to the tracks with the wrong kind of rope.
Robin McKinley
Without awareness, we are not truly alive.
James F.T. Bugental
Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident.
John Pipkin
In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could--a look, a whisper, a moan--to salvage from perishing to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn't, in the end, save it all.
Khaled Hosseini
People live in fear of bad being out to get them, when in reality, the bad side is there only to be in polar opposite proportion to the positive that you are destined to thrive in. Conquer the negative, and thrive in the positive.
C. JoyBell C.
Five million people die unnecessarily each year because of illness related to lack of potable water. Half of them are children under the age of five. To bring it home, think about this: one child dies from lack of clean water every twelve seconds.
Thomas M. Kostigen
I’m doing boy detox. Like a diet, only for my emotional health.
Becca Fitzpatrick
Hope is the beautiful dream of the soul.
Debasish Mridha
A life of conflict and greediness causes a person to suffer from the rheumatism of sadness.
Kilroy J. Oldster
In any case, it is not love, but friendship, that truly eludes you.
Michael Chabon
The right one for you will move mountains to be with you - he won't hide behind them.
Mandy Hale
Music is the language of the universe. Music was there even before the concept of life. Music is one of the most powerful catalysts of evolution.
Debasish Mridha
God doesn’t put that much prep into something that is insignificant.
Shannon L. Alder
I didn’t know who I was or who I wanted to be until you stumbled into my life. I refuse to let you go.
Alex Rosa
The tale of love and power was a continuum, much like the white carousel just outside of Acronis's hall. It turned around and around. Acronis was tired of the spin."-Madison Thorne Grey, Sustenance
Madison Thorne Grey
They went forth to battle, but they always fell;t Their eyes were fixed above the sullen shields;tNobly they fought and bravely, but not well,tAnd sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell.t They knew not fear that to the foeman yields,t They were not weak, as one who vainly wieldstA futile weapon; yet the sad scrolls telltHow on the hard-fought field they always fell.tIt was a secret music that they heard,t A sad sweet plea for pity and for peace;t And that which pierced the heart was but a word,tThough the white breast was red-lipped where the swordt Pressed a fierce cruel kiss, to put surceaset On its hot thirst, but drank a hot increase.tAh, they by some strange troubling doubt were stirred,t And died for hearing what no foeman heard.
Shaemus O'Sheel
Sell your cleverness and purchase bewilderment instead. It is such a willingness to live with bewilderment that characterizes the true wise man.
Richard Rohr
What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. 'Librarian' - that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between 'libido' and 'licentious' - it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly, title: Keeper of the Books. - p.113
Miles Harvey
If I knew ... that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good I should run for my life.
Henry David Thoreau
The more broken you are, the more light gets through.
Jason Gray
She screamed like an assassin was driving a knife into her stomach.She screamed like a thousand birds were pecking at her flesh.She screamed like the palace was burning down around her.
Marissa Meyer
Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.
Suzanne Collins
David ran through concrete advantages. And then set aside the practical. The pragmatist was gone, replaced by the poet and mystic.
Geraldine Brooks
I say that my value is based on my accomplishments. Christmas is God saying that I am His accomplishment and that will forever be enough.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Where did you get your tat?” “Aaron’s shop. You want to get a tat?” he asked, grinning as if this was hilarious. “I have one,” I said, rolling the ball into the gutter. “It’s not finished though.” “How come?” “My brother interrupted the tattoo and I never had the money to get it done again.” “No, I meant how come you’re such a bad bowler? Is it genetic?” he asked. “Like do you come from a long line of people who can’t make a ball roll in a straight line?” “You’re hilarious.” “I try, Pixie Dust.
Bijou Hunter
Your commitment to follow God's plan makes a difference in the atmosphere in your home and improves the climate of your marriage.
Elizabeth George
I am not my opinion of myself, I am not anything I can describe to me. I am only a part of a large system that cannot describe itself fully; therefore, I relax and I am in the point source of consciousness, of delight, of mobility, in the inner spaces. My tasks do not include describing me nor having an opinion about the system in which I live, biological or social or dyadic. I hereby drop that "responsibility".I am much more than I can conceive or judge me to be. Any negative or positive opinions I have of me are false fronts, headlines, limited and unnecessary programmes written on a thin paper blowing about and floating around in the vastness of inner spaces.
John C. Lilly