Quotes by American Authors - Page 1133

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.
Patti Smith
By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Perfect is the enemy of done.
Catherine Carrigan
The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.
Brennan Manning
The past is just that.
B.J. Daniels
After six long hours of driving and three rest stops, Tiger pulls up to a snow-topped, metal speaker box just outside the State Penitentiary's first gate in Walla Walla. As he rolls down his window and snow flies in his face, Joshua starts begging for a Happy Meal.I turn around, snapping at him. "This ISN'T MCDONALDS and YOU AREN'T HUNGRY. NOW SHUT UP BRAT."A loud scratchy masculine voice blasts out of the speaker. "CAN I HELP YOU?"Tiger leans out the window, as he answers- We're here to visit Raven Chandler."HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE?""Yes sir. I've been here A LOT." "WHERE'S HIS MOTHER?""I don't know.. I haven't seen her in months.""NOT THE PRISONER'S MOTHER. THE BRAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR JEEP.""Oh- HIM-" As he turns, smiling and sticking his tongue out at Joshua, I lean towards his window to answer the guard's question. "SHE'S IN VEGAS, SIR. I'M BABYSITTING. HE'S MY GODSON." When the speaker remains disturbingly silent for far too long, I continue. "HE'S A GOOD BOY SIR. HE WON'T BE ANY TROUBLE- I SWEAR." "THAT'S RIGHT," Tiger said. "HE SWEARS ON THE LITTLE BRAT'S MOTHER'S GRAVE.
Giorge Leedy
Vulnerability gives us freedom, power and connects us to a network of injured souls. It is through the art of being real that we can heal ourself and others.
Shannon L. Alder
Appreciation always enhances performance. Criticism destroys the enthusiasm.
Debasish Mridha
A monster is a person who has stopped pretending.
Colson Whitehead
If your self-talk leans toward the negative, the continual bashing will become debilitating
Susan C.Young
Do not get caught pursuing the goals of who you used to be instead of who you are.
Chris Matakas
Hang tightHold on Look upStay strongHang on Hold tightLook strongStay up One day I might breakOne day I mightb r e a kfree
Tahereh Mafi
Let go... How would your life be different if you learned to let go of things that have already let go of you? From relationships long gone, to old grudges, to regrets, to all the 'could’ve' and 'should’ve,' to the dead friendships you still hang on to... Free yourself from the burden of a past you cannot change.
Steve Maraboli
A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure, to provide stability. Not that I'm saying a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that...It does take a father though.
Tom DeLay
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit
Kin Hubbard
Shhh,” Mr. Winston whispered into her hair. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” He said it over and over again, just as the boy had done when she was at her most helpless. He rocked her with each stanza of the hypnotic prayer, and she melted into his arms, letting him be her strength as she cried into his chest.“I couldn’t keep her,” she finally mustered, wiping her nose against his scratchy flannel. “Shhh…” he repeated. He kissed the top of her head and then stood. With surprising strength, the elderly man lifted her as if she weighed nothing, bringing her to the car. He opened the car door with one hand, sat her in the front seat, and then buckled her in like she was a child. Exhausted, Maddie didn’t fight him or try to do it on her own. She needed someone else to be in charge for a while. She needed to be taken care of.
Crissi Langwell
You sneaked into my cabin?”Annabeth rolled her eyes. “Percy, you’ll be seventeen in two months. You can’t seriously be worried about getting in trouble with Coach Hedge.”“Uh, have you seen his baseball bat?”“Besides, Seaweed Brain, I just thought we could take a walk. We haven’t had any time to be together alone. I want to show you something—my favorite place aboard the ship.”Percy’s pulse was still in overdrive, but it wasn’t from fear of getting in trouble. “Can I, you know, brush my teeth first?”“You'd better,” Annabeth said. “Because I’m not kissing you until you do. And brush your hair while you’re at it.
Rick Riordan
I was not sorry for loving Charleston or for leaving it. Geography had made me who I was.
Sue Monk Kidd
I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.
Ursula K Le Guin
We took off our clothes, and we were basically in a sphere of love and light and warmth, and the rest of the world disappeared. It was better than I ever could have dreamed, it was that thing I had been looking for, that love mixed with the rapture of sex.
Anthony Kiedis
Every 'problem' we face is only a problem because of the way our mind (ego) perceives it. It is, in fact, not a problem at all but rather a lesson we are providing to ourselves in order to evolve.
Caroline A. Shearer
I must look at the 'nature' of God, not the 'nature' of the challenge. For the former means everything and the latter means nothing.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I write because my imagination won't let me quit. And because I want to read what I wrote and share what I've written.
Mary M. Lund
I'm fat," she blurted out. "You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower."I want every inch of you," he said, growling it. "I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips." He reach out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife.
Eloisa James
I will use this period of spiritual training in my life to focus on the greatness of my God instead of the impossibility of my circumstances.
John Bevere
I Do Not Like Canadians, I Love Them.
Chris Mentillo
The cool, lithe, cynical, and unconquered lord of the housetops.
H.P. Lovecraft
And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
Mario Puzo
Lord, grant that my work increase knowledge and help other men. Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction. Failing that, Lord, grant that my article in Brain be published before the destruction takes place.
Walker Percy
How much vanity must be concealed – not too effectively at that – in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?
Christopher Hitchens
No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have you own way.
Chuck Palahniuk
Part came from Lane, and part from D.H. Lawrence;Gide, though I didn't know it then, gave part.They taught me to express my deep abhorrenceIf I caught anyone preferring ArtTo Life and Love and being Pure-in-heart.I lived with crooks but seldom was molested;The Pure-in-heart can never be arrested.
W.H. Auden
To the world, most people are not remembered for being great parents. To the child, without parents, nothing great would have been put into the world.
J.R. Rim
The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to move in precisely the directions needed for human survival. A new consciousness is developing which recognizes that we are one species.
Carl Sagan
Doors vurst open all along the walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter of the room, blocking the exits.Hades bellowed, "Do you think I want war godling?"I wanted to say, 'Well, these guys don't look like peace activists'. But I thought that might be a dangerous answer.
Rick Riordan
They kept me in a cage for too long because now every room I am standing in is just another cell.
Raegan Butcher
He looked like a sexy ninja. Or a tiger ready to pounce on his prey. She just looked like she was sitting sideways on an invisible toilet. Curse the male species for making danger look so good!
Leia Shaw
From midnight to 4: 00 AM is the loneliest time in the world. Because for those of us too sad to sleep, the only thing we have to look at is an empty bed, and the only thing we have to think of is every single person who didn't want to fill it tonight.
Lone Alaskan Gypsy
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent. Genius will not unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Calvin Coolidge
I asked my dad once if his high school teachers began treating kids differently during Vietnam, when they knew some of their students would be drafted and sent to war. I was curious because for sure we’d started treating our military kids differently after 9/11. He just shrugged and changed the subject, like he always did. And that was okay with me. He’d go back and change a lot of things if he could; and like everyone else, I’d give anything to go back to the day before 9/11—but all we can do is move forward.
Tucker Elliot
It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.
Jon Stewart
What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of living high.
Doug Larson
But now I understand something more fully that I once only understood abstractly. I see how utterly ridiculous it is to think that the state can be the right means to help those who are poor or living at the margins of society. The state is their enemy, as it is for everyone else.
Jeffrey Tucker
Maybe this isn't home, nor ever was- maybe home is where I have to go tonight. Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.
Stephen King
Revive your inner spirit! Break free from all things weighing you down, grab hold of your strong rope and lift yourself out of hopelessness!
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.
R. Buckminster Fuller
Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.
Darrel Ray
Success is no proof of virtue. In the case of a book, quick acclaim is presumptive evidence of a lack of substance and originality.
Walter Kaufmann
She wanted his strong, capable hands on her blody and those soft lips locked with hers. She wanted to be held tight and kissed until she could forget-if only for a few precious minutes-that her life as she knew it had evaporated in a cloud of smoke and flame and violence.
Melissa Cutler
The past never went away and it was not designed to do so. It would always be there, and it should be acknowledged.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
Anger and resentment are the cancer of our mind. To be cured, inject love in your heart and be kind.
Debasish Mridha
The problem with radiation research is that you are constantly battling the biological effects of delayed radiation complications.
Steven Magee
Naturally all of us don't think we deserve very much. We don't believe that things will go well for us in the future, generally because they may not have in the past. Our natural bent is to expect the worst. Our natural tendency is to be negative and doubtful. It is actually very hard to be positive. It takes faith to be positive and believe that good things are in our future.
Lisa Bedrick
You haunt me. You alone. You're my fire. I'm your air." Nathaniel to Amelia
Saundra Mitchell
The paths that lead to the crossroads of life; otherwise known as "transition”, seem the longest, and darkest. This is a result of the tension present between struggle and grace. The more you resist, the more anxiety and stress you will encounter. Whereas, when you let go of the expectation of where you should be, or want to be, and accept the current situation, event, or circumstance, to merely exist, you will experience God’s sufficient Grace.
Deborah Brodie
Yeah, I was just curious. I concentrated on my footsteps.Yeah, well, next time you think about stepping into rock concerts you might want to bring a bodyguard.I stopped and turned around. I brought my hands to my hips, a bit offended. What is that supposed to mean?He dropped the end of the bat into the sand. It means your small.
Holly Hood
I am only alive because I have not yet died.
Anthony Doerr
I always hear people talk about 'dysfunctional families.' It annoys me, because it makes you think that somewhere there's this magical family where everyone gets along, and no one ever screams things they don't mean, and there's never a time when sharp objects should be hidden. Well, I'm sorry, but that family doesn't exist. And if you find some neighbors that seem to be the grinning model of 'function,' trust me - that's the family that will get arrested for smuggling arms in their SUV between soccer games.The best you can really hope for is a family where everyone's problems, big and small, work together. Kind of like an orchestra where every instrument is out of tune, in exactly the same way, so you don't really notice.
Neal Shusterman
You find out who you are by figuring out who and what you're not
Kelly Cutrone
Be my friend and love me, for the world is terrible lonely and I am sad.
Catherynne M. Valente