Quotes by American Authors - Page 1260

Those who have the privilege to know have the duty to act, and in that action are the seeds of new knowledge.
Albert Einstein
Well, hell yeah! I’m gonna kick your ass, too!”I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not this time you’re not. I have a new superpower.”He laughed. “And what’s that? Harsh language?”I leaned over to kiss his neck once, and then ran my tongue up to his ear, kissing his earlobe. He froze in place. “Distraction,” I breathed into his ear. He grabbed my arms and flipped me onto my back. “You’re going to miss another class.
Jamie McGuire
You’re a fool,” Quinhelm accused. “Any man who would allow himself to be bewitched by a woman needs a good dunking in a cold barrel of water.” (Quinhelm, the wizard, from BRIGGEN)
Ann B. Keller
The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.
Stephen King
Of all the lessons my parents taught me,GIVING was the best
Charmaine J.Forde
So on a scale of one to Adele, how bad was this breakup?
Jennifer Lane
Any story dealing, however seriously, with homosexual love is taken to be a story about homosexuality while stories dealing with heterosexual love are seen as stories about the individual people they portray. This is as much a problem today for American filmmakers who cannot conceive of the presence of gay characters in a film unless the specific subject of the film is homosexuality. Lesbians and gay men are thereby classified as purely sexual creatures, people defined solely by their sexual urges.
Vito Russo
Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.
Leila Sales
Another site of Leftist struggle [other than Detroit] that has parallels to New Orleans: Palestine. From the central role of displacement to the ways in which culture and community serve as tools of resistance, there are illuminating comparisons to be made between these two otherwise very different places.In the New Orleans Black community, death is commemorated as a public ritual (it's often an occasion for a street party), and the deceased are often also memorialized on t-shirts featuring their photos embellished with designs that celebrate their lives. Worn by most of the deceased's friends and family, these t-shirts remind me of the martyr posters in Palestine, which also feature a photo and design to memorialize the person who has passed on. In Palestine, the poster's subjects are anyone who has been killed by the occupation, whether a sick child who died at a checkpoint or an armed fighter killed in combat. In New Orleans, anyone with family and friends can be memorialized on a t-shift. But a sad truth of life in poor communities is that too many of those celebrate on t-shirts lost their lives to violence. For both New Orleans and Palestine, outsiders often think that people have become so accustomed to death by violence that it has become trivialized by t-shirts and posters.While it's true that these traditions wouldn't manifest in these particular ways if either population had more opportunities for long lives and death from natural causes, it's also far from trivial to find ways to celebrate a life. Outsiders tend to demonize those killed--especially the young men--in both cultures as thugs, killers, or terrorists whose lives shouldn't be memorialized in this way, or at all. But the people carrying on these traditions emphasize that every person is a son or daughter of someone, and every death should be mourned, every life celebrated.
Jordan Flaherty
If you can’t look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it’s there—take it out or change it.
Diana Gabaldon
The first and most important step in the process of becoming genuinely is to be once again authenticated by the original designer.
Erwin Raphael McManus
Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.
James Madison
Air traffic control is going to have a steamy old fit on your dime, boy.They can get in line behind the police, the people whose cars we trashed, the Empire of Ob'enn, the Partnership Collective, and the Wormgate Corporation. Oh, and I think maybe some dark matter beasties from Andromeda.You "think maybe"?-General Tagon & Captain Andreyasn
Howard Tayler
Childhood isn't just those years. It's also the opinions you form about them afterward. That's why our childhoods are so long.
Kim Stanley Robinson
Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all you have read, and I believe there is much truth in that.
Louis L'Amour
And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.
Lois Lowry
Today is a really bad day, Syd. A really, really bad day. Sometimes in life, we need a few bad days in order to keep the good ones in perspective
Colleen Hoover
If love is the music of the heart, then philosophy should be the music of the mind.
Debasish Mridha
Changing entrenched systems is daunting; the odds against reshaping the nation's police forces are high. But there are few things more important than making sure their profession is the brave, honorable service it should be. We have to do it, or watch our communities and our democracy disintegrate.
Ann Medlock
I feel that I am merely an agent, giving you some keys that have been given to me to pass on to you. These keys are to unlock doors out of your present prison. Doors opening onto new vistas. Doors beyond where you are now.
John C. Lilly
Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.
Elizabeth Hardwick
Hatred is a death wish for the hated not a life wish for anything else.
Audre Lorde
In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism, leaders to whom are granted great visions, who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls. The leader for the time being, whoever he may be, is but an instrument, to be used until broken and then to be cast aside; and if he is worth his salt he will care no more when he is broken than a soldier cares when he is sent where his life is forfeit in order that the victory may be won.
Theodore Roosevelt
The decor was attractive and strong, but blander than she would have thought his wealth and position afforded him. Caren couldn't see the point of having that much money if all of it led to beige.
Attica Locke
If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate books.
Alan King
The Koran is empathetic about the rights of other religions to practice their own beliefs. It unequivocally condemns attacks on civilians as a violation of Islam. It states that suicide, of any type, is an abomination. The tactic of suicide bombing, equated by many of the new atheists with Islam, did not arise from the Muslim world. This kind of terror, in fact, has its roots in radical Western ideologies, especially Leninism, not religion. And it was the Tamil Tigers, a Marxist group that draws its support from the Hindu families of the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, which invented the suicide vest for their May 1991 suicide assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.Suicide bombing is what you do when you do not have artillery or planes or missiles and you want to create maximum terror for an occupying power. It was used by secular anarchists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They bequeathed to us the first version of the car bomb: a horse-drawn wagon laden with explosives that was ignited on September 16, 1920, on Wall Street. The attack was carried out by Mario Buda, an Italian immigrant, in protest over the arrest of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. It left 40 people dead and wounded more than 200.Suicide bombing was adopted later by Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and Hamas. But even in the Middle East, suicide bombing is not restricted to Muslims. In Lebanon during the suicide attacks in the 1980s against French, American and Israeli targets, only eight suicide bombings were carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. Twenty-seven were the work of communists and socialists. Three were carried out by Christians.
Chris Hedges
She tugged the sleeves down over her hands, stretching the fabric until the seams reached her fingernails. Then she locked her fingers around them to ensure they stayed down.Veda fought the urge to rip those sleeves from Coco’s grip and force her to wear them appropriately, or at the very least roll them up so she wouldn’t be tempted to yank at them. She could remember a time when she’d had the same habit, back in middle school. As if hiding her hands behind a thin piece of fabric would protect her from the world.
Trevion Burns
When RBG fretted over the first dry opinion the chief justice assigned her, O'Connor gave her a pep talk. As RBG read that opinion on the bench, O'Connor, who had dissented in the case, passed her a note. "This is your first opinion for the Court," she had written. "It is a fine one, I look forward to many more." Remembering the comfort that note gave her on such a nerve wracking day, RBG did the same for the next two women to join the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Irin Carmon
For is it not said That Girl Knows No Fear, and Dammit, Fran, She's Going To Get Herself Et, and This Is From Your Side Of The Family, Jonathan, No One In My Family Has Ever Hugged A Basilisk Before?
Seanan McGuire
I know my heart will never be the sameBut I'm telling myself I'll be okay
Sara Evans
That—this—is Orion’s secret. It’s not that the ship isn’t working, that we’re never going to make it.It’s that the ship has already arrived.We’re already here! There—there—is the planet that will be our home!It floats, so bright that it hurts my eyes. Giant green landmasses spread out across blue water, with swirls and wisps of clouds twirling over top. At the edge of the planet, where it turns away from the suns and starts to darken, I can see bright flashes of light—bursts of whiteness in the darkness—and I think: Is that lightning? In the center, where the light of the suns makes the planet seem to glow from within, I can see, very distinctly, a continent. A continent. On one edge, it’s cracked and broken like an egg, dark lines snaking deep into the landmass. Rivers. Lots of them. Maybe something too big to be rivers if I can see it from here. Fingers of land stretch out into the sea, and dots of islands are just out of their grasp. That area will be cool all the time, I think. Boats can go along the rivers, up and down. We can swim in the water.Because already, I can see myself living there. Being there.On a planet that looks up at a million suns every night, and at two every day.I want to scream, shout with joy. But the air is so thin now.Too thin.I’ve spent too long looking at Orion’s secret.The boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . fades away. There’s nothing to warn about now.Because there’s no air left.My sight is rimmed with black. My head pulses with my heartbeat, which sounds as loud to me as the alarm once did. I turn from the planet—my planet—and start pulling, hand over hand, against the tether, toward the hatch. The ship bobs in and out of my vision as my whole body jerks. I’m panicked now and fighting to stay awake. I try to suck in air, but there’s nothing there to suck. I’m drowning in nothing.
Beth Revis
They're called 'facts', and my role is to amplify those, not cheerlead. And I don't care at all what you think of my motives.
Glenn Greenwald
Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.
Sarah Addison Allen
I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity.
Gilda Radner
Responding to a suicide attempt by insisting that it must stop, and devoting the full resources of therapy to preventing it, is a communication with compassion and care at its very core.
Marsha M. Linehan
Does affirmative action place minority students in colleges where they're likely to fail while depriving other applicants of the chance to attend the most challenging schools where they are capable of succeeding? Does rent control drive up the cost of housing, depriving property owners of the same opportunity to profit as any other investor while driving down the quality and quantity of the housing stock? Do minimum wage laws reduce the number of entry-level jobs, making it harder to escape from poverty? Because compassion, by its nature, subordinates doing good to feeling good, these are questions the warm-hearted rarely pursue.
William Voegeli
I had nothing to offer anybody except for my own confusion
Jack Kerouac
There is no God and we are his prophets.
Cormac McCarthy
The piercing fanfare of the brass against the brutal boom and rattle of the drums surged through the air. At the head of the Ferris band marched the drum majorette. A crimson and white shako crowned her long dark hair which flew out behind her and across her radiant face flushed with excitement. Her blue eyes flashed and her smile registered triumph at having been chosen.
Clark Zlotchew
And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.
Lysander Spooner
You can't beat yourself up anymore,' he says. 'And you can't compare your thing to my thing or to anyone else's thing on the how-bad-should-I-feel? scale.
Melissa C. Walker
He hadn't done it, and there was no point thinking about might-have-beens
Jo Graham
When we try to understand another, we reveal ourselves, and in revealing ourselves we are able to be understood. Our heart declares itself to another heart, and that which is common between us becomes the bridge over which understanding crosses.
Kent Nerburn
The grace of God has been tested in the crucible of human experience, and has been found to be more than an equal for the problems and sins of humanity.
Billy Graham
Dear Mom,I won't be home this weekend because I'm wanted for treason and I have to clear my name. Also, I took the last Sprite from the fridge.Love, Steve
Mac Barnett
In short, not only was it surprising to be greeted in person with such enthusiastic words, but it was doubly surprising when the person reciting these words displayed the same kind of disengagement as, say, the checkout clerk who utters the words 'Have a nice day' while her expression indicates that it's really a matter of total indifference to her whether you drop dead in the parking lot outside ten seconds from now.
David Foster Wallace
It seems like I want them to like me for my mind, anyway," she said, "so why not let them go straight for it? Why get them to like my legs? It doesn't seem like that's me. I feel like what I look like is government issue, it's pretty much out of my hands. But I invent the stuff I say. That's me.
Carrie Fisher
Together a brick and a blanket create the perfect metaphor for life. Will you be a brick and make something of your life, or be a blanket and sleep your life away?
Amy Sommers
I would follow my mother around the kitchen watching and trying to find any way to help. One of the first dishes my mother taught me to make was hollandaise sauce. Though she always served it with broccoli, I soon realized it was equally delicious with asparagus, artichokes, or any other vegetable.
Tracy Pollan
Taking guilt out of the equation allows a person to see how he is hurting himself and others and what he can do about it. Eliminating guilt about sex allows a person to talk about needs and desires more honestly and negotiate with possible partners. If a person feels shame about his desires, he is unlikely to talk about it with anyone. As long as the cycle of guilt persists, harmful behavior will likely continue.
Darrel Ray
People gravitated here for the open air, the prolific intoxicants and the visual treats. They made the deals here that were later played out elsewhere. They drank and got high. Sometimes they fought, not for money but for sport or grudge.They were the desperate and the daring, the lost and the searching. Tonight, they were his audience. Tomorrow, they would be his front line.
G.S. Jennsen
For certain you can be helped, should you accept it. But as far as being made...no one can do that. This occurred on the day you were born. An earth day is not a birth day. Own what you create as well as what you break.
T.F. Hodge
Everything I am longing for - peace of mind, contentment, grace, the inner awareness of my abundance - will surely be mine... when I am prepared to receive ALL with an open and Thankful heart.
Raymond D. Longoria Jr.
While Maddox now believed the demon did not want to hurt Ashlyn, he wasn't willing to take a chance. He would talk about flowers and moonbeams - he cringed - if it meant maintaining this delectable inner peace."Is there a way to break your death-curse?" Ashlyn asked. So much for flowers and moon-beams.
Gena Showalter
Father Ratti had often explained, in Religious Knowledge class, that true humility did not mean a sense of worthlessness or the kind of timidity that caused some people to be cheated and bullied all their lives. The virtue of humility, Ratti said, was merely the faculty of intelligence operating properly "The man of wisdom," Ratti explained once, "fears only one man on earth. Do you know who that is?" And when everybody guessed wrong — some said the Pope, some said King Ferdinand — Ratti said, "The man of wisdom fears himself. He knows who it is who tells him the most plausible lies, the lies he wants to believe.
Robert Anton Wilson
By exchanging quality time for 'turn-up' times, what many of today's wayward youngsters have become - men and women of the village have failed them.
T.F. Hodge
One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality.
Richard Rohr
You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.
Jessica Mitford
This kind of passionate faith can be painful. Not caring is easy. Caring hurts. Caring costs you something. But without this sort of faith, you will never create to your fullest potential. Faith is a gift. Like I've said, felt belief is not necessarily something that you choose to have or not to have. But it is a gift that you can open yourself to receive.
Michael Gungor
First-class relationships are possible only in an atmosphere of total trust.
Chris Prentiss