Quotes by American Authors - Page 13

She (historian Barbara Tuchman) draws on skepticism, not cynicism, leaving the reader not so much outraged by human ability as amused and saddened by human folly.
Robert K. Massie
As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.
John Gardner
I wont let him have you.
Sophie Jordan
No one does anything right in life, until they realize that they are making a mistake
Albert Einstein
I remembered Ignifex's smirk and his confident words: I can wait all I want and still have you. And I thought, Here is one thing he isn't getting. Standing on my toes, I kissed Shade on the lips. It was just a bump of my face against his. Despite Aunt Telomache's lecture, I had no idea how long to prolong a kiss, and his lips startled me, foreign and cool as glass. But then he caught me under the chin and gently kissed my mouth open. Though his lips were still cool, his breath was warm; as he kissed me. I breathed in time to him, until I felt like my body was only a breath of air mixing with his.
Rosamund Hodge
Music eats its young and gives birth to a new hybrid creature.
David Byrne
Have some fun while you wait for the will of heaven.
Tom Spanbauer
Even to someone as notorious as Madonna, I think Jesus would say, 'I'll help you experience the fulfillment that has eluded you despite your struggle to find it. I'll help heal whatever's driving you to affirm your self-worth in self-defeating ways. But I can only help you if you let me.
Lee Strobel
Unless death is made a lesson for the living, the life lived is wasted.Why should life come into existence only to be destroyed? One dies and another is born—for what? A few miserable hours of life—then oblivion!With this recognition of the finality of death, no one should willingly withhold acts that would bring benefits, joy or happiness to others. In death, the hesitant act can no longer be performed—the word of praise is as impossible as yesterday's return.What perversity justified inflicting pain, suffering and death upon others who have done no wrong? If death ends all, why fight while we are living? Why shorten life with unnecessary pain and suffering? How futile are the petty problems of individuals, with their hates and jealousies, when all vanish with death? All the prayers in the world cannot wipe out one injustice.Every wrong is irreparable.The dead cannot forgive.All the tears and sighs are of no avail.Forgiveness cannot be granted when lips cannot move.Praise cannot be heard when ears cannot hear; joy cannot be experienced when the heart no longer beats; and the happiness of an affectionate embrace can no longer be felt when arms are limp and the eyes are forever closed.
Joseph Lewis
Both thinking over feeling provide vital feedback to support your survival and help you flourish.
Deborah Sandella
We are a product of the choices we make, not the circumstances that we face.
Roger Crawford
If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, that body will become an extension of what you're hearing.
Judith Jamison
Sit down before fact with an open mind. Be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads or you learn nothing. Don’t push out figures when facts are going in the opposite direction.
Hyman G. Rickover
Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love.
Ernest Hemingway
We are all the products of nature composed with essential elements. Every natural force has an opposite. The components of earth, wind, water, and fire comprise nature. Similar to nature, we contain complementary, contradictory, and counterpoising elements.
Kilroy J. Oldster
When people ask how old I am, I just tell them twenty-one, and if they assume I mean years instead of decades or centuries, then that can't be my fault, can it?
Kevin Hearne
Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain.
John F Kennedy
Oftentimes, especially during my recovery, I didn’t need to think about everything I was doing wrong; instead, I needed to focus more on what I was doing right—and then do more of the right stuff. I needed to live more in the solution.
Jenni Schaefer
When we come to Christ, God calls us out of this world’s sin and confusion. But then He sends us back into the world—not to share any longer in its sin and spiritual darkness, but to bear witness to the light of Christ.
Billy Graham
It's so Hogwarts.
Stephanie Perkins
When you are relaxed about where you are at in life, things tend to flow more fluidly. It is as if you poke three holes in a bucket of water. The same amount of water is going to flow out the holes whether you let it flow or you shake the bucket. The difference is the amount of turmoil on the inside of the bucket!
Jennifer O'Neill
The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.
Marty Rubin
Four flips the gun in this hand, presses the barrel to Peter's forehead, and clicks a bullet into place. Peter freezes with his lips parted, the yawn dead in his mouth. "Wake. Up," Four snaps. "You are holding a loaded gun, you idiot. Act like it.
Veronica Roth
You can't have that wish, my Little Bear,' said Mother Bear.
Else Holmelund Minarik
Music- what a powerful instrument, what a mighty weapon!
Maria Augusta von Trapp
We're better off not worrying about ourselves, and to do that, we have to worry about others.
V.C. Andrews
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach man's mind. Who knows who might be the target of a well-read man?
Ray Bradbury
A memory, long buried, sprang up of her father warning her never to cross the stream and go into the forest."The Dragonwood," she mumbled.How could she have forgotten the Dragonwood?Her father had explained that it wasn't their land, and that dangerous animals lurked in the shadows.
Donna Grant
A man who loves money is a bastard, someone to be hated. A man who can't take care of it is a fool. You don't hate him, but you got to pity him.
Stephen King
Somewhere in the distance I hear the bucket clatter to the floor. I plunge the knife into his head, again and again. His arms lash out blindly, getting in the way. Blood mixes with water cascading to the floor. Meathead staggers to his feet, pulling off his shirt, trying to peel away the agony, but his skin comes away with it, leaving a raw, red mess.There’s a shrill alarm and the sound of pounding feet. I hurl the knife through the bars at the window. A blur of dark faces converge in my vision, fists and feet, punching and kicking. Meathead’s mates are yanking me off, trying to hurt me. Screws come rushing and soon they’re everywhere as I’m half-carried, half-dragged along the corridor.t‘Blimey,’ a thought comes from somewhere in all the chaos, ‘I’ve only been out a day and already I’m heading straight back down the chokey!’ The last thing I see, as a screaming Meathead is hurried to the hospital, is my cellmate in the middle of the crowd peering worriedly after me. Course he’s worried! The stinky bastard is wondering where his next bit of scag is coming from!
Harry Shaw
Gabriel shuffled around the trunk again, searching for faux arrows—arrows designed to injure but not kill. “All these arrows are sharp—and have blood on them.”“Yes, well, I left my cotton candy arrows at home next to my teddy bear.”Gabriel turned to Tristan. “We’re not going to kill that guy.”“We might.”“Tristan, that’s homicide.”“It’s self defense.”“It’s not self defense. He didn’t come after you.”“But he came after Scarlet. And, technically, Scarlet is a piece of me. So, yeah. It’s self-defense. Are you coming with me or not?”“I don’t want to kill him. I just want to hurt him. Or detain him.”“Or maybe you could just give him a big hug.”Tristan started marching into the woods. “You can stay there and clean weapons or whatever, but I’m going after our intruder.
Chelsea Fine
I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.
Noah Hawley
My heart was crazy now; it's too complicated to know what it was beating for, and how much of it was him and how much of it was the hunting - I think I cared about the deer that got shot - but it didn't matter then. Something was there and its source was irrelevant. It was so easy to feel nothing, all the time, and I held on as hard as I could, because the worst thing, I thought, now, would be for it to go away.
Patrick Somerville
I remember taking an anthropology class in college and the professor was explaining that there is little 'sexual dimorphism' in humans. He meant that there are few outward, observable differences between makes and females. At the time I was confused, so I raised my hand. 'I feel like it's very easy to tell men and women apart,' I said.'That's due to culture,' he answered.
Brandon Stanton
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.
Henry David Thoreau
A writer's duty is to draw a picture that expresses more inner beauty, deeper anxiety, and more complex tragedy than a real character ever can.
Debasish Mridha
THE SILENT PEOPLESome people are so rude,Living their lives with no concern for others,Or possibly just intent on pissing other people off-Annoying everyone around them.The silent people-Want to kill them-And drive forks into their skulls-Create weapons of extreme torture-And scream from the top of their lungs-"SHUT UP."But words are not spoken-And attention is not given.Though annoyance is apparent,The annoying keep on living.
Giorge Leedy
I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.
Rick Yancey
Lollipop had been her nickname for me as long as I could remember. I asked her how she came up with the name, and she told me sometimes kids are sweet, and sometimes they just need a good lickin'.
Lacey Weatherford
Kerouac lacks discipline, intelligence, honesty and a sense of the novel. His rhythms are erratic, his sense of character is nil, and he is as pretentious as a rich whore, sentimental as a lollypop.
Norman Mailer
I think we should stop treating ["God works in mysterious ways"] as any kind of wisdom and recognize it as the transparently defensive propaganda that it is. A positive response might be, "Oh good! I love a mystery. Let's see if we can solve this one, too. Do you have any ideas?
Daniel C. Dennett
That (labyrinth)...became a world whose rules I lived by, and I understood the moral of mazes: sometimes you have to turn your back on your goal to get there, sometimes you're farthest away when you're closest, sometimes the only way is the long one. After that careful walking and looking down, the stillness was deeply moving...It was breathtaking to realize that in the labyrinth, metaphors and meanings could be conveyed spatially. That when you seem farthest from your destination is when you suddenly arrive is a very pat truth in words, but a profound one to find with your feet.
Rebecca Solnit
Theo looked at me with his smoldering Jesus eyes, and the Catholic schoolgirl in me crossed her legs.
Gabrielle Zevin
Stick." I said in Russian. I had no clue what the word for stake was. I pointed at the silver ring I wore and made a slashing motion. "Stick. where?" He stared at me in utter confusion and then asked in perfect English, "why are you talking like that?
Richelle Mead
He patted the side of the wyrm's head. The animal did not react: it was a stone fallen from the sky, still smoldering.
Zachary Jernigan
Subjugation requires vigilance; if you relax your brutality even for a moment, the people you're oppressing will revolt at the first sign of weakness. That's why dictatorial regimes are always a slippery slope of cruelty doomed to end in failure.
Nenia Campbell
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
James A. Michener
Just a smile from the right person can delete fear, cancel unhappiness, and even dissolve physical pain.
Doug "Ten" Rose
See the stars, Lily?"She sighed, surrendering. "Of course.""Do you think they can see the sun coming up?""I don't know. Probably?""Do you think they're scared?""They're burning balls of gas, Calder.""Oh, c'mon. Where's the poet in you?"She exhaled, and I sensed her smile. "I see. Well, in that case, yes. They've finally come home. They are triumphant in their midnight kingdom. But the enemy approaches. They have the numbers on their side, but the enemy is bigger, stronger, with a history of winning that goes back to the dawn of time. They're definitvely terrified."I nodded. She understood my analogy."But they don't run, Calder.
Anne Greenwood Brown
On my fifth trip to France I limited myself to the words and phrases that people actually use. From the dog owners I learned "Lie down," "Shut up," and "Who shit on this carpet?" The couple across the road taught me to ask questions correctly, and the grocer taught me to count. Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. "Is thems the thoughts of cows?" I'd ask the butcher, pointing to the calves' brains displayed in the front window. "I want me some lamb chop with handles on 'em.
David Sedaris
It was nice to call my parents and proudly tell them, "My lady garden is going viral." In hindsight, that may have been a poor choice of phrasing.
Jenny Lawson
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...
Ta-Nehisi Coates
...if a person remains in a state of unforgiveness the Spirit of the Lord will allow tormentors to enter him. That's what Christ told Peter when the disciple asked, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" (Matt. 18:21).
Benny Hinn
Everyone you meet should go into a people file (organized by categories) that you keep on your computer or phone. Include a few details about the person. Selected names should be placed on your “big-mouth” e-mail list. It should consist of former bosses, former coworkers whom you want to stay in touch with, anyone who has mentored you, people you’ve met who seem interested in your career. People on your big-mouth list then get sent an e-mail notification when you have important career news—for instance, you’ve switched jobs, been promoted, or started your own business.
Kate White
Allowing children to learn about what interests them is good, but helping them do it in a meaningful, rigorous way is better. Freedom and choice are good, but a life steeped in thinking, learning, and doing is better. It’s not enough to say, “Go, do whatever you like.” To help children become skilled thinkers and learners, to help them become people who make and do, we need a life centered around those experiences. We need to show them how to accomplish the things they want to do. We need to prepare them to make the life they want.
Lori McWilliam Pickert
No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame its parts their functions and actions.
Thomas Jefferson
But if I die without trying again, I'm a coward. I don't mind having regrets about stuff I've done. It's the regrets about stuff I haven't done that bother me.
Poppy Z. Brite
When confidence is there, conviction is easy.
Debasish Mridha
You're like this...this goddess pretending to be human... And I don't know which one I love.
Thomm Quackenbush
There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent.
Daniel Berrigan