Quotes by American Authors - Page 1162

I must never equate the degree of pain as evidencing the incorrectness of a decision, for if I do I will default on some of the most critical decisions I should have ever made.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Kids are kids and not little adults. They're watching and listening to you all the time. They're figuring out the game plan but still don't know all the rules. Talk straight to them and they'll respect you for it.
Carew Papritz
A misbegotten hatchling of consciousness, a birth defect of our species, imagination is often revered as a sign of vigor in our make-up. But it is really just a psychic overcompensation for our impotence as beings. Denied nature’s exemption from creativity, we are indentured servants of the imaginary until the hour of our death, when the final harassments of imagination will beset us.
Thomas Ligotti
We have come to understand the phenomena of life only as an assemblage of the lifeless. We take the mechanistic abstractions of our technical calculation to be ultimately concrete and "fundamentally real," while our most intimate experiences are labelled "mere appearance" and something having reality only within the closet of the isolated mind. Suppose however we were to invert this whole scheme, reverse the order in which it assigns abstract and concrete. What is central to our experience, then, need not be peripheral to nature. This sunset now, for example, caught within the network of bare winter branches, seems like a moment of benediction in which the whole of nature collaborates. Why should not these colours and these charging banners of light be as much a part of the universe as the atoms and molecules that make them up? If they were only "in my mind," then I and my mind would no longer be a part of nature. Why should the pulse of life toward beauty and value not be a part of things? Following this path, we do not vainly seek to assemble the living out of configurations of dead stuff, but we descend downwards from more complex to simpler grades of the organic. From humans to trees to rocks; from "higher grade" to "lower grade" organisms. In the universe of energy, any individual thing is a pattern of activity within the flux, and thereby an organism at some level.
William Barrett
To change your perspective, you have to change your perspective.
Kelley Hazen
A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.
Irving Penn
Where does one run to escape from feelings?
B.J. Neblett
We know by intuition and study that great books approach a condition both above and below human — what Lesser means by “grandeur and intimacy” — and our job is to place ourselves somewhere on the continuum between those shifting poles, to welcome a gravid agitation or be willing to undergo some form of personal torsion; to have our personhood both threatened and amplified.
William Giraldi
Families are designed to nurture the minds, wills, and emotions of its members so that the barriers created by fear of the unknown can be replaced by the confidence that comes from knowing you are loved whether you succeed or fail.
Leigh A. Bortins
ME SIENTO MAL POR TI VIEJO AMIGO, PERO AL FINAL DEL DIA FUE MEJOR QUE TE FUERAS.
LORINDA MONRREAL
When we feel haunted, it is the pull of our own home we're experiencing, but a more upsetting possibility is that the past has become homeless, and we are offering it a place to inhabit in the present.
Yiyun Li
I was going to have to face the man who'd destroyed my kingdom, and the boy who was the reason.
Jodi Meadows
War provides some people with a sense of purposefulness. The drumbeat of war quickens the pulse of neighbors, relatives, tribes, and nations. Hostile nations amass weapons of destruction claiming that they seek peace through deterrence. When war comes, advocates of arms galvanize the citizenry by proclaiming the inevitability of conflict. Each side’s propaganda machine cast the campaign of present war as the next Great War. Generals brashly promote armed conflict as the war to end all other wars. Saber-rattlers proclaim that the opposition’s militant disciples instituted this ordeal of conquest and destruction.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Life on the run was filled with dreams, some at night during sleep, real dreams, and some when the mind was awake but drifting. Most were terrifying, the nightmares of the shadows growing bolder and larger. Others were pleasant wishes of a rosy future, free of the past. These were rare, Patrick had learned. Life on the run was life in the past. There was no closure
John Grisham
Sometimes arriving too quickly is detrimental. It is dangerous to arrive without our character mature or intact.
Lisa Bevere
We could visit him," suggests Will. "But what would we say? 'I didn't know you that well, but I'm sorry you got stabbed in the eye'?
Veronica Roth
As soon as he had departed she directed her attention to the others.“I need a shielded containment box, radiation gloves and a micro welding torch. And a crescent wrench.
G.S. Jennsen
As a father, we need to actively listen.
Asa Don Brown
Stay alert! Don’t let someone’s words blind you from their behavior... They can say all the right things, they can make you feel things you've never felt before, but don't be fooled; their actions will reveal their true character, desires, and priorities. Behavior speaks; pay attention to what it tells you. Behavior is math; pay attention to what it reveals.
Steve Maraboli
Understanding of oneself is the first act in establishing a transformative philosophy for living a vivid and a reflective existence. Knowing thy self is essential to designing and instigating a meaningful life that is self-directed instead of exclusively controlled by innate traits and external determinates.
Kilroy J. Oldster
...I understand that at times, life takes us in different directions than we planned.
Nichole Chase
Getting bored is not allowed.
Kay Thompson
If I propose to myself and myself says yes, I get to have the cake, right? I love me, so I’m thinking 12 tiers.
Michelle M. Pillow
He found himself inhabiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.
Jess Walter
When Gansey was polite, it made him powerful. When Adam was polite, he was giving power away.
Maggie Stiefvater
There was nothing in life harder or more important than agreeing every morning to stay the course, to go back to your forgotten self of so many years ago, and to make the same decision.
Emma Straub
Success is a spiritual process, not a worldly one; that is to say it is an internal process, and not external.
Bryant McGill
Patriotism is merely deeply-rooted government brand loyalty.
Bryant McGill
Live by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.
Cormac McCarthy
Oh no, real life is escape. The great terrors, the horrors--we hope--of your life come from reading fiction.
Orson Scott Card
Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
Ray Bradbury
Dat's a some joke, Hey Boss.
Chico Marx
The score never interested me, only the game.
Mae West
The thought of being able to [move my arms] made me want to give up my legs [instead] since I was accustomed to using them. But, I figured that after a few hours of sitting in a wheelchair...I would switch back...in a flash.
Sarah Todd Hammer
The church is not a theological classroom. It is a conversion, confession, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness and sanctification center, where flawed people place their faith in Christ, gather to know and love him better, and learn to love others as he designed.
Paul David Tripp
Theo shook out the half square of heavy silk. "It will make all the difference to this insipid gown." With one sharp wrench she pulled out the lace fichu tucked into her bodice and replaced it with the scarf. It flashed raspberry red against the almond-colored muslin of her gown.
Eloisa James
Glory is sacrifice, glory is exhaustion, glory is having nothing left to give.Almost.It is death by living.
N.D. Wilson
If you are enduring a cold season, don't underestimate Christ can plant you right where you are at no matter how dirty, beat up, or worthless you may feel. Rest assured, He has strategically placed you in the precise place on earth for such a time as this.
Dana Arcuri
I believe that when a person has hope in the future, believe in their ability to achieve and understand that God made them for a purpose, then they will, in the end, and achieve great things.
John Patrick Hickey
For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.
Justin Cronin
Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight to keep it from taking over.
Ann Brashares
When you blame, you open up a world of excuses, because as long as you're looking outside, you miss the opportunity to look inside, and you continue to suffer.
Donna Quesada
If I had been armed with a feminist understanding that no girl deserves to be called a slut, perhaps I would have fought back by reporting the harassment to my school's headmistress or another school authority, or at least I might have had the strength to tell of the name-callers on my own. But at the time, all I knew was that if I avoided eye contact, it was a hell of a lot easier to get through my days.
Leora Tanenbaum
It meant nothing. Some people are like that: everything comes out like a lie. Not that they're brilliant liars, just that they're useless at telling the truth. You get left with no way to tell what's the real fake and what's the fake one.
Tana French
So often they made her think of the phrase “Blood is thicker than water,” because at times blood was the only bond they shared and she had to remind herself they were family, because at times it was unbelievable they were even related. She loved them, but she hadn’t chosen them.
Victoria Kahler
So one can lose a good ideaby not writing it down, yet by losing it one can have it: it nourishes other asidesit knows nothing of, would not recognize itself in, yet when the negotiationsare terminated, speaks in the acts of that progenitor, and doesrecognize itself, is grateful for not having done so earlier.
John Ashbery
Thank you for being you… for sharing your love with me… for inspiring me to accept myself… for helping me see the unique beauty in imperfection… for showing me that love is something you do; something not just to be said, but also to be shown.
Steve Maraboli
When I was laying there in his arms nothing else mattered. My parents, my lack of funds, everything just seemed to melt away as I was lost in his lips"- Bentley Evans
Magan Vernon
When the ego is in the driver’s seat, we judge. When our spirit, our authentic self, is in control, we practice listening (without judging), compassion, and love.
Sheila Burke
Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.
James Madison
Mom always liked to say that we hardly ever know the decisions we make that change our lives, mostly because they are little ones. You took this bus instead of that one and ended up meeting your soul mate, that kind of thing. But there was no doubt in my mind that this was one of those life-changing moments.
Rachel Hawkins
Self-deception and vanity are grievous sin. The ego is the cause of all human suffering. We suffer from life only when we fail to examine the cause of our sorrow. Letting go of destructive illusions and freeing oneself from egotism of self-pity enables a person to sense the rich intertexture of their inner world, which is the only facet of reality that we exercise exclusive dominion and control.
Kilroy J. Oldster
But I was going to learn the hardest lesson in life: that those whoare closest to you, always betray you first.
Susan Speranza
At a career peak, there is certainly the specter of competition from below, but just as importantly, there’s the risk that if we aren’t on a curve that satisfies us emotionally, we may be the cause of our own undoing.
Whitney Johnson
Not all honey— she had concluded— had a specific use beyond what all honey is good for, sweetness and salves. But this honey, it was somehow so strong that it must be for something, though she had still not learnt what it was. The best she had come to was that this honey was for joy...
Robin McKinley
Have you come over time to think that you know more now than you did when you were young, know less now than when young, know now there is so much more to know than you knew there was to know when young that it is moot whether you think you knew more then than now or less, or do you now know that you never knew anything at all and never will and only the bluster of youth persuaded you that you did or would?
Padgett Powell
crawled like a blind slug into the web
Charles Bukowski
I don't think I'm entirely on board with the 'do what you truly want to do' school of thought. Not without a little more nuance. There has to be an anchor in the wide-open space. Otherwise, 'doing what you truly want' isn't an authentic attempt at exploration -- it's just another hyper-individualistic credo masquerading as something grand. I mean we're all gung ho about pursuing personal freedom, but why do we want it? If we never constructively apply it to something beyond ourselves, and if it doesn't deepen our sense of connection and humanity, then what's the point?
Clara Bensen
If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.
Chila Woychik
When enough insane people scream in harmony that they really are healthy, they can actually start to believe themselves. Or put even more simply: people with overlapping delusions get along wonderfully.
Daniel Mackler