Quotes by American Authors - Page 1336

How do we reconcile the imperfections of feminism with all the good it can do? In truth, feminism is flawed because it is a movement powered by people and people are inherently flawed. For whatever reason, we hold feminism to an unreasonable standard where the movement must be everything we want and must always make the best choices. When feminism falls short of our expectations, we decide the problem is with feminism rather than with the flawed people who act in the name of the movement.
Roxane Gay
Melville to Hawthorne: "In your stories, you seem to understand that the dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong buy when he must choose between two wrongs.
Mark Beauregard
You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.
Ernest Hemingway
Nonetheless, many people, and especially intellectuals, passionately loathe capitalism. As they see it, this ghastly mode of society’s economic organization has brought about nothing but mischief and misery. Men were once happy and prosperous in the good old days preceding the Industrial Revolution. Now under capitalism the immense majority are starving paupers ruthlessly exploited by rugged individualists. For these scoundrels nothing counts but their moneyed interests. They do not produce good and really useful things, but only what will yield the highest profits. They poison bodies with alcoholic beverages and tobacco, and souls and minds with tabloids, lascivious books and silly moving pictures. The “ideological superstructure” of capitalism is a literature of decay and degradation, the burlesque show and the art of striptease, the Hollywood pictures and the detective stories.
Ludwig von Mises
When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail's response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, "My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.
David McCullough
Water is always working, reorganizing the land.
Tim Palmer
They keep track of time. Sometimes things happen and you feel that you need to mark them down.
Scott O'Connor
Being in the mood to write, like being in the mood to make love, is a luxury that isn't necessary in a long-term relationship. Just as the first caress can lead to a change of heart, the first sentence, however tentative and awkward, can lead to a desire to go just a little further.
Julia Cameron
I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned."Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I'd say those words with a straight face...
J.R. Rain
But as we let go of our repetitive stories and fixed ideas about ourselves--particularly deep-seated feelings of "I'm not okay"--the armor starts to fall apart, and we open into the spaciousness of our true nature, into who we really are beyond the transitory thoughts and emotions. We see that our armor is made up of nothing more than habits and fears, and we begin to feel that we can let those go.
Pema Chödrön
Eyes speak louder than words; life is precious; hate is poison; God is the best of all possible friends; silence and time are valuable treasures; happiness can be just as powerful in pretend; and soft licorice is a temptation in any color, especially exotic black.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Christopher, baby, I love you. Completely. I love your looks and everything else about you.” She felt his hand enclose around hers. “I know you do. Ashleigh…I love you so much that it scares me. Everything I do, I have you in mind.
Pepper Pace
It took me several minutes to persuade myself to watch the news. During which time I gave myself a stern talking to. That turned into me considering a local pub that would be the perfect place to drown my sorrows in a barrel of tequila, though after much introspection, I scratched the idea just to avoid needless drunken embarrassment. Then, admittedly, I contemplated pouncing Andrew for another steamy romp session. Despite its proven potency to assuage stress and tension, I decided now was not the time to indulge in explosive sexcapades.
Laura Kreitzer
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.
Tara Bray Smith
Orlando had a Pinto, a car that hadn't been in existence for thirty-plus years. He still hadn't figured out why a strong, strapping werewolf would want one. Orlando said it was because he'd customized it. Painted pink with purple stripes, the younger male could often be found cruising up and down the streets of Wolf Town, with his terrible music blaring out of the windows. The car was a ticking time bomb. Already, more than one werewolf had offered to blow it up. Orlando better enjoy it, Connor doubted he would have it for very much longer.
Rose Wynters
You have the power to change the happiness level in someone’s life and in the process you change your mind-set and the level of your own happiness. Practicing kindness and compassion will change your life, your environment, your outlook on your future, and how you view what has happened in your past.
Sheila M. Burke
Those of us who are concerned about the 'church-less Christian' phenomenon ... must first look at ourselves and ask to what degree *we* have contributed to the conditions that tempt some to hit eject on the local church.
Scott Sauls
Death pulls people from our spaces so often and we accept it as our final payment for having been here and having lived, however big or small. We don’t always have time to notice how things have changed in the absence of some of them. But then death pulls away someone we love, and we find that time. In here, we notice everything; growing grass and fingernails, and songs that end in a minor key. We are too sad to do anything else but watch a clock, applying seconds, minutes, and hours to the trauma and the lacerations. Time, the forever healer, they say. We find the time to wonder how everyone else is moving on, around our paralyzed selves. Ourselves unsure of roads and trees and birds and things. It all blurs and words aren’t words anymore. We find the time to attempt to figure a way to rethink everything we thought about this world and why we came to it.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Be kind to all and trust all. If you do so, only a few will break your trust.
Debasish Mridha
We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn’t always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.
Zoraida Córdova
C.S. Lewis had come to demand of his nightly prayers a "realization," "a certain vividness of the imagination and the affectations" – a sure recipe for sleeplessness and misery.
Philip Zaleski
Success is to wake up each morning and consciously decide that today will be the best day of your life.
Ken Poirot
Me comes before we. You need to become future strong before you can help others do the same.
Bill Jensen
There are many men out there who can see nothing but evil. It is on their vision like a cataract. Don't make yourself available to their interpretation of your worth.
Laurie Perez
I believe that reappropriation can be a powerful tool for creating social change. Sometimes, things like irony, satire, or humor are more effective in getting at difficult truths or concepts like white privilege, orientalism, and the exoticization of culture.
Simon S Tam
Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality.
L.E. Modesitt Jr.
In between every action and reaction, there is a space. Usually the space is extremely small because we react so quickly, but take notice of that space and expand it. Be aware in that space that you have a choice to make. You can choose how to respond, and choose wisely, because the next step you take will teach your child how to handle anger and could either strengthen or damage your relationship.
Rebecca Eanes
She says his eyes address her like the silence of the snow.
Ronald H Peat
You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.
David Morrell
Shall we take it slow this time? Maybe I'll make you beg me to let you come.""I don't beg."He laughed wholeheartedly. "We'll see about that.
Zoe Forward
A good friend of mine once said, "I have never met a bigot who was a reader as a child.
Marion Dane Bauer
A carpenter is hired- a roof repaired, a porch built. Everything that can be fixed. June, July, August. Everyday we hear their laughter. I think of the painting by van Gogh, the man in the chair. Everything wrong, and nowhere to go. His hands over his eyes.
Mary Oliver
WHO AM I?I have seven heavenly panelsLeading up to a pointed sphereI’m multidimensional like a crystalAnd my center is never clear.I’m an inventor and pioneer.A mentor to my peers.But I'm not as sound as my shell reveals,Because I’m tormented by my fears -That may appear to be groundedBut my insides are filled with tears.And the sadness is well-founded,From years and yearsOf traumatic experiencesCompoundedIn the most dementedAtmospheres.I talk but feel like nobody hears.Has reason disappeared?And, God, are you near?This is Giza’s 7th light forceAnd I'm asking you to interfere.I can no longer walk amongst the blind and deadWith open eyes and ears.I’m trying to maintain my sanityAnd to straighten up my veneerAs I roll amongst the growing calamitiesFlowing on Earth’s severely trashedFrontier.Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)
Suzy Kassem
In paintings, music, poetry, architecture, we feel the elusive energy that moves through us and the air and the ground all the time, that usually disperses and turns chaotic in our busy-ness and distractedness and moodiness. Artists channel it, corral it, make it visible to the rest of us. The best works of art are like semaphores of our experience, signaling what we didn't know was true but do now.
Anne Lamott
Finally, I laugh. Genuine and normal sounding. And then my date says the best thing that he couldpossibly say: “It’s okay. I haven’t been on one of these [dates] in a while either.”My smile triples in size.Josh grins. “Just give me your hand.”“W–what?”“Your hand,” he repeats. “Give it to me.”I extend my shaking right hand. And – in a moment that is a hundred dreams come true – JoshuaWasserstein laces his fingers through mine. A staggering shock of energy shoots straight into myveins. Straight into my heart.“There,” he says. “I’ve been waiting a long time to do that.
Stephanie Perkins
The wolf demands her mate. But the woman loathes the man.
Lisa Kessler
Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors.
Pearl Buck
The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know, what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained and he only holds the key to his own secret.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Achieving success is hard staying successful is even harder.
Frank Sonnenberg
A tightly woven argument is impermeable to the frigid winds of criticism.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
You've been halfway living your life for too long. May was saying that when it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.
Sue Monk Kidd
Bathsheba looked at Benedict. "You never told me they were matchmaking.""He didn't notice!" said his father before Benedict could answer. "He didn't notice handsome young misses of unexceptionable family. He didn't notice beautiful heiresses. We tried bluestockings. We tried country girls. We tried everything. He didn't notice! But Bathsheba Winngate, the most notorious woman in all of England, he noticed.""We notorious women tend to stand out," she said.
Loretta Chase
Folks write down the name of someone who fills them with frustration, disappointment, and/or resentment, and then I propose that their person is doing the best he or she can. The responses have been wide-ranging...One woman said, "If this was true and my mother was doing the best she can, I would be grief-stricken. I'd rather be angry than sad, so it's easier to believe she's letting me down on purpose than grieve the fact that my mother is never going to be who I need her to be.
Brené Brown
What has been his cause for searching the heavens day and night, for testing the limit of his reach hour by hour like a man trapped inside an expanding balloon? The reasons were as various as the days they consumed: to grasp the workings of the universe, to find something more beyond earth’s fretful compass, to put his name to a discovery and secure fame’s immortality, to be able to point to a map and proclaim simply: here I am.
John Pipkin
While JFK had made the sale on a political level, he had not yet completed it on an emotional one.
David Pietrusza
Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez
Jealousy was essentially "I want what you have," while envy was "I want what you have, but I also want to take it away so you can't have it.
Meg Wolitzer
Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.
Jon Foreman
We spend so much of our time lost in thought, trying to label everything as isolated objects and events. Though we fail to realize that our thoughts are incapable of defining anything in its totality. We can think about a situation for as long as we want to, but our thoughts will never know the situation exactly as it exists.
Joseph P. Kauffman
Juniper: Are you guys busy? Percy: Well, we’re in the middle of this game against a bunch of monsters and we’re trying not to die. Annabeth: We’re not busy.
Rick Riordan
Life is a series of deaths and resurrections, losses and gains, pain and joy.
Torry Martin
In this life you will have some trials and tribulations. You cannot allow what happens to you to dictate who and what you become. Make a decision to do better and be better.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
This is the way of peace-overcome evil with good and falsehood with truth and hatred with love.
Peace Pilgrim
I have since come to understand the reality that sometimes God wants us to go through a process without ever achieving what we thought was the goal. God cares about the journey more than the end result.
Shelene Bryan
I know I’m not supposed to say this,” he said. “But I think I love you more than ever.”I took his hand and tried not to think about how happy his words made me.
Richelle Mead
Without the wetness of your love, the fragrance of your water, or the trickling sounds of your voice ― I shall always feel thirsty.
Suzy Kassem
Aggression like this demanded slinging the first punch in a bar brawl, firing rounds at a range, or setting a car on fire.
Katherine McIntyre
I would remind you that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Barry Goldwater
You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.
Sarah Kay
Rather than be fearful and sell out at the worst time or get greedy when the market is way up, investors should control their emotions and not only avoid panic, but embrace the market volatility for what it is: an opportunity and a gift. Suffocate the instincts that want to make you a bad investor and rather embrace the chaos that normally causes them to rise to the surface.
Peter Mallouk