Quotes by American Authors - Page 1097

During voir dire, the interviews for jury selection, each person is asked under oath about their experience with the criminal justice system, as defendant or victim, but usually not even the most elementary effort is made to corroborate those claims. One ADA [Associate District Attorney] told me about inheriting a murder case, after the first jury deadlocked. He checked the raps for the jurors and found that four had criminal records. None of those jurors were prosecuted. Nor was it policy to prosecute defense witnesses who were demonstrably lying--by providing false alibis, for example--because, as another ADA told me, if they win the case, they don't bother, and if they lose, "it looks like sour grapes." A cop told me about a brawl at court one day, when he saw court officers tackle a man who tried to escape from the Grand Jury. An undercover was testifying about a buy when the juror recognized him as someone he had sold to. Another cop told me about locking up a woman for buying crack, who begged for a Desk Appearance Ticket, because she had to get back to court, for jury duty--she was the forewoman on a Narcotics case, of course. The worst part about these stories is that when I told them to various ADAs, none were at all surprised; most of those I'd worked with I respected, but the institutionalized expectations were abysmal. They were too used to losing and it showed in how they played the game.
Edward Conlon
Beware of those who clam to have all the answers.
Joel T. McGrath
Kids these days, right? Ignorant and in love with their ignorance.
Christopher Farnsworth
As you move through the seasons of change and make a deliberate decision to Review and Redo along the way, you can begin to see everything from a fresh perspective. This will generate new opportunities for making things better or creating something completely brand new.
Susan C.Young
His lips parted under hers, damp and soft and warm, and she forgot all of that. Her entire life focused in on the sensations, the gentle pressure that grew more intense the longer the kiss went on.Chaste kisses, then dirtier ones, and man, those tasted good. They tasted better the wider her mouth opened, and especially after his tongue touched hers.She could have done a whole semester of kissing with Shane. Intense personal study. With lab classes.Time really wasn’t happening for her, but eventually Claire realized that there was a soft glow coming from the windows, and she was numb and sore from sitting on the floor. She winced as a muscle in her back protested, and Shane reached out, pulled her up, and settled himself on the couch.He stretched out, and extended a hand to her. She stared, tingling and confused. “There’s no room.’”“Plenty of room,’” he said.She felt breathless and kind of wild, stretching out on the tiny area of sofa cushion available next to him, and then smothered a yelp as Shane picked her up and draped her over his chest and, oh my God, over all the rest of him, too.“Better?’” he asked, and raised his eyebrows. It was a real question, and he was looking for a real answer. Claire felt a blush building a fire in her cheeks, but she didn’t look away from his gaze.“Perfect,’” she said.
Rachel Caine
All creatures are capable of darkness, but not all choose to succumb to it.
Sara Humphreys
There are so many ways to think about almost everything. And none of them is nearly as round as reality.
Davis Miller
Tiny-perhaps." Rovender kept his eyes fixed on the rings. "Insignificant-never, Eva Nine. No living thing is insignificant.
Tony DiTerlizzi
So be careful when you bend over.
Charles Bukowski
Connection, he explained, was the essence of pop music, according to his boss, Jimmy Iovine: “Jimmy always says it’s all about the connection between the artist and the fans,” he says. “This whole business, it’s just about that connection.
John Seabrook
Pack up all my care and woe, blackbird, bye-bye
Stephen King
But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.
Veronica Roth
Today, take a dive in a beautiful, calm, tranquil lake of peace.
Debasish Mridha
Let us take our tongues and stick them out and waggle them in the wind. Let us walk, loving, let us walk and love, walking along, loving.
Meia Geddes
We walked through night until there was a poem.
Brenda Hillman
Although time seems to fly, it never travels faster than one day at a time. Each day is a new opportunity to live your life to the fullest. In each waking day, you will find scores of blessings and opportunities for positive change. Do not let your TODAY be stolen by the unchangeable past or the indefinite future! Today is a new day!
Steve Maraboli
When I was young I said to God "God tell me the mystery of the universe." But God answered "That knowledge is reserved for me alone." So I said "God tell me the mystery of the peanut." Then God said "Well George that's more nearly your size." And he told me.
George Washington Carver
To some will come a time when change itself is beauty if not heaven.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
I know one thing about men," Bunny says with finality, leaving the room to check on A. "They never die when you want them to.
Suzanne Finnamore
Winter gold: the sparrow's footprints in the snow.
Marty Rubin
My parents had drinks and there were crudités for us- although they were not called crudités at the time, they were called carrots and celery.
Nora Ephron
When we pick up the newspaper at breakfast, we expect - we even demand - that it brings us momentous events since the night before...We expect our two-week vacations to be romantic, exotic, cheap, and effortless..We expect anything and everything. We expect the contradictory and the impossible. We expect compact cars which are spacious; luxurious cars which are economical. We expect to be rich and charitable, powerful and merciful, active and reflective, kind and competitive. We expect to be inspired by mediocre appeals for excellence, to be made literate by illiterate appeals for literacy...to go to 'a church of our choice' and yet feel its guiding power over us, to revere God and to be God. Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The future is called "perhaps " which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
Tennessee Williams
Your poise, postures, and gestures are the physical manifestations of your attitudes, perceptions, belief systems, self-esteem, feelings, and engagement. Be sure to know if they are working well or hindering the actualization of your potential. Being the architect for your habitual patterns of non-verbal language, you have the power to change any of it at any time.
Susan C.Young
I've never kissed an art forger before" Lord Huntington to Eliza Somerton in "An Artful Seduction
Tina Gabrielle
Trying is the first step to failure
Homer Simpson
It's nothing serious," he said. "It's just an obsession.
Mary Gaitskill
Because the golden egg gleamedin my basket once, though my childhoodbecame an immense sheet of darkening waterI was Noah, and I was his ark,and there were two of every animal inside me
Mark Doty
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W.H. Auden
If you could be either God’s worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?
Chuck Palahniuk
I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.
Saul Bellow
Your life was meant for more than being a life-long doormat for deadbeats, losers, gossipers, nay-sayers, dream-crushers, energy vampires, users, abusers, ragers and passive-aggressive backstabbers.
Bryant McGill
Whose empire did you just overthrow?" My own.
Emery Lord
Selecting the right measure and measuring things right are both art and science. And KPIs influence management behavior as well as business culture.
Pearl Zhu
What we want for others doesn't work unless they want it for themselves.
Bryant McGill
Philip Yancey sees our blasé attitude toward the faithfulness of God in the waitstaff At Yellowstone. Even when they are finished their chores, they don't look up and marvel at the geiser going off. After all, they see it so often.
Philip Yancey
Call it dysphoric mania, agitated depression, or a mixed state: nobody will understand anyway. Mania and depression at once mean the will to die and the motivation to make it happen. This is why mixed states are the most dangerous periods of mood disorders. Tearfulness and racing thoughts happen. So do agitation and guilt, fatigue and morbidity and dread. Walking late at night, trying to get murdered, happens. Trying to explain a bipolar mixed state is like trying to explain the Holy Trinity, three persons in one God: you just have to take it on faith when I tell you that the poles bend, cross, never snapping.
Elissa Washuta
A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
Neal Stephenson
Grief would weave itself among the threads of love and life and hope, and I was starting to believe that what came of it all would still one day be beautiful.
Shannon Huffman Polson
The press-savy Lincoln looked not to the future, but to the past.
Harold Holzer
As soon as you open your mind to doing things differently, the doors of opportunity practically fly off their hinges.
Jay Abraham
But people in masks were always assholes. It was a scientific law. Give someone anonymity and all social niceties break down. The Internet had proven that.
Chelsea Cain
It's physics. Pure physics,I'm falling fast and faster still.So fall with me. Fall down with me.And stay.
Cecily von Ziegesar
In everyone's mind there is a whisper of the next step. It may be simple, such as making a phone call or reading a book. It may be a very concrete, mundane step to take that may not even seem connected with your higher vision. Know that you are always being shown the next step; it is always something that comes to your mind as obvious, simple, and a joyful thing to do
Sanaya Roman
I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein
I told the students that they were at the age when they might begin to choose places that would sustain them the rest of their lives, that places were more reliable than human beings, and often much longer-lasting, and I asked them where they felt at home.
Rebecca Solnit
In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.
May Sarton
My tendency to make up stories and lie compulsively for the sake of my own amusement takes up a good portion of my day and provides me with a peace of mind not easily attainable in this economic climate.
Chelsea Handler
Life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point.
Jeff Lindsay
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is a spiritual experience of living every moment with love, grace and gratitude.
Dennis Waitely
In fact, “talent” is as common as mud; what’s rare is the motivation to sit down and actually do something with one’s talent, the discipline to do it regularly, and the persistence to stick with it until it’s finished.
Patricia C. Wrede
If the retreat house was a trap, it was a very nice one.
Elizabeth Hand
Sunset on the water ought to be a quiet and easy time, but I guess some people can't stand a little silence.
Carl Hiaasen
If you have a big idea or plan that you desire to execute, don't depend solely on others to appreciate your efforts. You must have the ability to encourage yourself. At times seeking encouragement from others can lead to disappointment which sometimes leads you to neglect your obligation. Never build your hopes and dreams based primarily on the accolades from others. You may discover a rude awakening.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
As a consequence of natural analgesic actions or as a result of the administration of drugs that interfere with body signaling (painkillers, anesthetics), the brain receives a distorted view of what the body state really is at the moment. We know that in situations of fear in which the brain chooses the running option rather than freezing, the brain stem disengages the part of the pain-transmission circuitry, a bit like pulling the plug. The periqueductal gray, which controls these responses, can also command the secretion of natural opioids and achieve precisely what taking an analgesic would achieve -- elimination of pain signals.In the strict sense, we are dealing here with a hallucination of the body because what the brain registers in its maps and the conscious mind feels do not correspond to the reality that might be perceived. Whenever we ingest molecules the have the power to modify the transmission or mapping of body signals, we play on this mechanism. Alcohol does it; so do analgesics and anesthetics, as well as countless drugs of abuse. It is patently clear that, other than out of curiousity, humans are drawn to such molecules because of their desire to generate feelings of well-being, feelings in which pain signals are obliterated and pleasure signals induced.
António R. Damásio
A year ago, I was at a dinner in Amsterdam when the question came up of whether each of us loved his or her country. The German shuddered, the Dutch were equivocal, the Brit said he was "comfortable" with Britain, the expatriate American said no. And I said yes. Driving across the arid lands, the red lands, I wondered what it was I loved. the places, the sagebrush basins, the rivers digging themselves deep canyons through arid lands, the incomparable cloud formations of summer monsoons, the way the underside of clouds turns the same blue as the underside of a great blue heron's wings when the storm is about to break.Beyond that, for anything you can say about the United States, you can also say the opposite: we're rootless except we're also the Hopi, who haven't moved in several centuries; we're violent except we're also the Franciscans nonviolently resisting nucelar weapons out here; we're consumers except the West is studded with visionary environmentalists...and the landscape of the West seems like the stage on which such dramas are played out, a space without boundaries, in which anything can be realized, a moral ground, out here where your shadow can stretch hundreds of feet just before sunset, where you loom large, and lonely.
Rebecca Solnit
Be that strong girl that everyone knew would make it through the worst, be that fearless girl, the one who would dare to do anything, be that independent girl who didn't need a man; be that girl who never backed down.
Taylor Swift
...every god serves a purpose and every faith fills a need.
Michael G. Williams
The focus on self has led our society into a fascination with pleasure, emotional and sexual stimulation, and “personal fulfillment.” America’s compulsion for “maximum personhood” is evidenced everywhere.
Billy Graham
They turned on themselves, like a feverish wheel, all tumbling spokes. Margot stood alone. She was a very frail girl who looked as if she had been lost in the rain for years and the rain had washed out the blue from her eyes and the red from her mouth and the yellow from her hair. She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitened away, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost. Now she stood, separate, staring at the rain and the loud wet world beyond the huge glass.
Ray Bradbury