Quotes by American Authors - Page 1208

And I wondered if love was too weak a word for what he felt, what he’d done for me. For what I felt for him.
Sarah J Maas
Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. your life?
Christopher Hitchens
All infants and children require and deserve comfort in order to develop properly. Soft cooing voices, gentle touch, smiles, cleanliness, and wholesome food all contribute to the growing body/mind. And when these basic conditions are absent in childhood, our need for comfort in adulthood can be so profound that it becomes pathological, driving us to seek mothering from anyone who will have us, to use others to fill our emptiness with sex or love, and to risk becoming addicted to a perceived source of comfort.
Alexandra Katehakis
For need can blossom into all the compensation it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing-the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.
Marilynne Robinson
I had said before that all stories were magic. It had never occurred to me that all magic was stories.
Jim C. Hines
If we can realize that life is always happening for us, not to us… game over, all the pain and suffering disappears.
Tony Robbins
We shouldn't be doing this." Dan broke the silence, his voice low. "We would both get in trouble." He stood up. "Let's go back.""We shouldn't be doing what?" I scrambled to my feet. "What exactly are we doing?""This.""You mean consorting?""Sure, consorting. Cavorting. Carousing." He paused to take a deep breath."Kissing." Then he leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine.
Leila Sales
Failure really isn't terrible if you can say to yourself hey I know I'm gonna be successful at what I want to do someday. Failure doesn't become a big hangup then because it's only temporary. If failure is absolute then it would be a disaster but as long as it's only temporary you can just go and achieve almost anything.
Jerry Delia Femina
When you forget who you are and whose you are, you start to compromise.
Kris Vallotton
It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?
Jennifer Egan
It was hard not to realize what kind of kid his parents wished they'd had, and when he thought about that kind of kid it was tempting for Paul to want to track, hunt, and eat the little thing.
Ben Marcus
Laura said faintly, 'I thought God takes care of us.''He does,' Pa said, 'so far as we do what's right. And He gives us a conscience and brains to know what's right. But He leaves it to us to do as we please. That's the difference between us and everything else in creation.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
...and without love, one is a dead man on furlough, nothing but a scrap of paper with a few dates and a chance name on it, and we as well die.
Erich Maria Remarque
Yes, Daisy. Feel it,” he murmured against her mouth. “Feel what’s in my heart for you.” His hand slipped under the covers... - Christian Stone
Nancy Glynn
That was . . .” I trailed off trying to find the proper adjective.“Long overdue?”“Long overdue? You’re the one who got skittish when I mentioned how I felt and backed away when we almost kissed.”“You call me on all my crap, don’t you?” He laughed throwing his head back. “That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. His fingersskimmed up my shoulders until they cradled my neck and my whole body tingling.
Lani Woodland
Repentance in Greek means something much closer to "thinking differently afterward" than it does "changing your cheating ways." Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it can also look like a prostitute simply saying, "OK, I'm a sex worker and I don't know how to change that, but I can come here and receive bread and wine and I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Affliction may be for our edification and Christian development.
Billy Graham
I love letting my soul soar on a summer breeze, or getting entranced by the rhythm of the sea. It carries you off on its currents until you’re completely lost and then drops you back on the shores of reality with salt on your cheeks and grains of dreams running through your fingers like sand. It’s almost an occasional necessity – I guess because when you get completely, fantastically, dizzyingly lost you’re temporarily suspended between what has been and what could be. In those first moments when you come back up for air, or when you float back down to the ground, you’re living in the land of possibility, where you understand that reality can stretch just as far as you’re willing to dream.
Cristen Rodgers
Chatty, defensive, observant. My new favorite witness.
Rob Thomas
Most people are slow to champion love because they fear the transformation it brings into their lives. And make no mistake about it: love does take over and transform the schemes and operations of our egos in a very mighty way.
Aberjhani
You think you're funny? I think I'm adorable.
Eric Kripke
There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality.
Dominic A. Pacyga
I like incidents of that sort, when forces that are usually so sneaky and hard to point out slither out of the grass and are as obvious as, say, an anaconda that's eaten a cow or an elephant turd on the carpet.
Rebecca Solnit
It is convenient for the old men to blame Eve. To insist we are damned because a country girl talked to the snake one afternoon long ago. Children must starve in Somalia for that, and old women be abandoned in our greatest cities. It’s why we will finally be thrown into the lakes of molten lead. Because she was confused by happiness that first time anyone said she was beautiful. Nevertheless, she must be the issue, so people won’t notice that rocks and galaxies, mathematics and rust are also created in His image.
Jack Gilbert
In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.
Kami Garcia
[A Letter to the Culture that Raised Me] I'm not here to be on display. And my body is not for public consumption. I will not be reduced to an object, or a pair of legs to sell shoes. I'm a soul, a mind, a servant of God. My worth is defined by the beauty of my soul, my heart, my moral character. So I won't worship your beauty standards, and I don't submit to your fashion sense. My submission is to something higher.
Yasmin Mogahed
We want our wounds to speak for themselves, but usually we end up having to speak for them.
Leslie Jamison
Well, I’m just going to say it.I’m listening, Louis said.I wonder if you would consider coming to my house sometimes to sleep with me.
Kent Haruf
The entire evolutionary record on our planet, particularly the record contained in fossil endocasts, illustrates a progressive tendency toward intelligence. There is nothing mysterious about this:smart organisms by and large survive better and leave more offspring than stupid ones.
Carl Sagan
...ultimately it come down to, are you making or are you destroying? If you try very hard to create ways of living, create dreams of what is possible, then you win. If you don't, you may make a fortune in ten years, but you're not going to be read in twenty years, and that's that.
John Gardner
Dad takes a step back, one hand still on my shoulder, and reaches into his pocket. He draws out a little blue capsule, and I feel every molecule in my body screaming to run. Dad must catch the panic in my eyes - he squeezes my shoulder and holds out the capsule. "Cas, it's fine. It's going to be fine. This is just in case."Just in case. Just in case the worst happens. The ship falls. Durga fails, I fail, and the knowledge I carry as a Reckoner trainer must be disposed of. That information can't fall into the wrong hands, into the hands of people who will do anything to take down our beasts. So this little capsule holds the pill that will kill me if it comes to that. "It's waterproof," Dad continues, pressing it into my hand. "The pocket on the collar of your wetsuit, keep it there. It has to stay with you at all times." It won't happen on this voyage. It's such a basic mission, gift-wrapped to be easy enough for me to handle on my own. But even holding the pill fills me with revulsion. On all my training voyages, I've never had to carry one of these capsules. That burden only goes to full-time trainers. "Cas." Dad tilts my chin up, ripping my gaze from the pull. "You were born to do this. I promise you, you'll forget you even have it." I suppose he ought to know - he's been carrying one for two decades.It's just a right of passage, I tell myself, and throw my arms around his neck once more.
Emily Skrutskie
The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
The noise of the world is so terrible that we can endure it only by being coated with sleep.
Saul Bellow
My motto: sans limites.
Isadora Duncan
I want you all to line up in alphabetical order according to your size.
Casey Stengel
You are not a small and unimportant creature confined to the form of this physical body, contrary to popular belief. At the core of your being you are pure awareness, and this awareness is the same source from which everything in the Universe arises, exists as, and returns to. Consciousness is the dimension of yourself that you have forgotten you are, and of which you long to return to.
Joseph P. Kauffman
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
John Kenneth Galbraith
...victory does not come to men who listen to their fears.
Bernard Cornwell
You hate birthdays yet pee your pants over presents. There is clearly something wrong with you," Garrett joked.
Tara Sivec
Knowing why you are is your purpose.Knowing who you are is your style.Knowing what you are is your character
Debasish Mridha
Kissing looked...nice."We could try that, next time I visit your dreams." Torin suddenly said, and my SpaghettiO's sloshed over the side of the bowl."What?"Torin nodded toward the television. "Kissing. You've never done it, I'm quite good at it...seems like we should at least make an attempt."Glaring at him, I scrubbed at the spot on my T-shirt. "I don't want to kiss you.
Rachel Hawkins
What keeps life fascinating is the constant creativity of the soul.
Deepak Chopra
Of all sad words of tongue or pen the saddest are these: It might have been.
John Greenleaf Whittier
This IS exactly how things look just before your dreams ignite!
Liz Hester
All right, I'll wait another two thousand years to make jokes about my evilness.
Tui T. Sutherland
If you had weak eyes, they needed exercise to get strong. Glasses were like crutches. They prevented people with feeble eyes from seeing the world on their own.
Jeannette Walls
It is amazing what a woman can do if only she ignores what men tell her she can't.
Carol K. Carr
Your best authorial self is always one about to ruin the story.
Chuck Wendig
Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy... fear makes you always, always hold something back.
Philip K Dick
Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.
Roy T. Bennett
Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.
David Sedaris
Every time you rip the bandages off, you just open the wound up again. Every time he sees you, it's like tearing off the bandages.
Cassandra Clare
It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.
M.H. Abrams
He can touch your soul. And there is a difference between having your heart break and having your soul shatter.
Cassandra Clare
It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.
Laini Taylor
Sure. If she gets mugged, she can just flute them to death.
Seanan McGuire
Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.
Paul Auster
That's the thing about being a Labrador retriever - you were born for fun. Seldom was your loopy, freewheeling mind cluttered by contemplation, and never at all by somber worry; every day was a romp. What else could there possibly be to life? Eating was a thrill. Pissing was a treat. Shitting was a joy. And licking your own balls? Bliss. And everywhere you went were gullible humans who patted and hugged and fussed over you.
Carl Hiaasen
The power of thought is not a compelling force. It is a building force, and it is only when used in the latter sense that desirable results can be produced.
Christian D. Larson
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
Will Rogers