Quotes by American Authors - Page 1396

Why should anyone be so grateful for acceptance unless he doubts that he is acceptable, and why should a young, educated and successful couple have such doubts, if not due to the fact that they cannot accept themselves because they are not themselves.
Erich Fromm
She told the truth as she saw it, and she died for it. I came along for the ride, and I lived. It wasn't worth it. But it was the truth, and it was what had to happen.
Mira Grant
I didn't say what kind of book. You have a foul mind Bingley.""Don't mock me on my sister's wedding day!""I mocked you on yours; I hardly see how this is as bad," was Darcy's reply.
Marsha Altman
The War,' said a soldier proverb, 'will last a hundred years--five years of fighting and ninety-give of winding up the barbed wire.
Preston William Slosson
Become the master of your life. Be dedicated to becoming excellent at what you want. Persistence leads to achievement.
Mark F. LaMoure
Perfection is out of the question.
Anne Archer
Of all the major religions, or lack thereof, the atheist's is one of the best pretenders: his foundation for all existences, as well as moral behaviors for the permanent good of mankind, begins at science but ends at himself, the Napoleon complex of both intelligence and imagination. On the other hand the anti-theist wouldn't survive without a deity beyond himself to hunt. He doesn't pretend, he simply nullifies his own position.
Criss Jami
If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.
Gayle Forman
I want to remember what we were like before we became ourselves.
Kris Kidd
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all there is only the meaning we each give to our life an individual meaning an individual plot like an individual novel a book for each person.
Anaïs Nin
A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.
Ann Brashares
The reason a lot of women can't move on from a relationship or people they love is because they need to know why. Why did this happen? Why did you do this? Why don't you care? Why did you hurt me? Why do you believe this about me? Why did you send me mixed signals? Why are these other people in your life acting like you care? Men have it all wrong. Insecurity is not why a lot of women don't let go. Women have a difficult time letting go because men don't communicate why at the level that women require. They don't back up their words with actions that are not confusing or could be misinterrupted as something else. Until, men learn that their actions and their friends and families reactions can create a questionable doubt about how they feel, they will forever have to deal with the drama they create for themselves.
Shannon L. Alder
She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Worrying about outcomes over which I have no control is punishing myself before the universe has decided whether I ought to be punished.
Sherry Thomas
Quote taken from Chapter 1:I know what." Isabel reached under the end table, took out the game board, and rattled the Band-Aid box containing the letter tiles. "It's been a week-and-a-half since our last Scrabble game.
Ed Lynskey
Look at me!" he would shout as he ran laughing through the halls of Storm's End. "Look at me, I'm a dragon," or "Look at me, I'm a wizard," or "Look at me, look at me, I'm the rain
George R.R. Martin
She laughed. ''You seem pretty normal.''''You've never seen Ben snort Sprite up his nose and then spit it out of his mouth,'' I said.''I look like a demented carbonated fountain,'' he deadpanned.
John Green
I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.
Jandy Nelson
. . . the only legitimate reason that kingship is not attractive to us is because in this age and this world the only kings available are finite and sinful. Listen to C. S. Lewis describe why he believes in democracy:A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. . . . The real reason for democracy is . . . Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.1If there could be a king who is not limited in his wisdom and power and goodness and love for his subjects, then monarchy would be the best of all governments. If such a ruler could ever rise in the world—with no weakness, no folly, no sin—then no wise and humble person would ever want democracy again.The question is not whether God broke into the universe as a king. He did. The question is: What kind of king is he? What difference would his kingship make for you?
John Piper
Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.
Barbara Kingsolver
Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
Henry David Thoreau
Don’t wait for a perfect person to love. Love a person and make him or her perfect with your power of love.
Debasish Mridha
I look at ordinary people in their suits them with no scars and I'm different. I don't fit with them. I'm where everybody's got scar tissue on their eyes and got noses like saddles. I go to conventions of old fighters like me and I see the scar tissue and all them flat noses and it's beautiful. ... They talk like me like they got rocks in their throats. Beautiful!
Willie Pastrano
The sin of self is a deadly sin.
Billy Graham
You can crawl back to whatever hole you live in and fuck your landlord for rent.
Richelle Mead
Success is the sweetest revenge.
Vanessa Williams
If you can give your son or daughet only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.
Bruce Barton
No matter what your age or your life path, whether making art is your career or your hobby or your dream, it is not too late or too egotistical or too selfish or too silly to work on your creativity.
Julia Cameron
Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn.
Graham Moore
The cruelty intrinsic to the workhouse system was excused by the need to discourage idleness, much as the malice intrinsic to the mental hospital system has been excused by the need to provide treatment.
Thomas Szasz
If somebody tells you a rule, break it. That's the only way to move things forward.
Hans Zimmer
Work out to work up.
Toni Sorenson
Shut up!" Eve yelled from somewhere upstairs. "Jackass!""You know, when people say that, I just hear the word awesome,
Rachel Caine
Living the life I wanted was my ultimate responsibility. Learning to forgive was my ultimate act of self-love.
andrea T Goeglein
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai E. Stevenson II
You see the world for what it is and what it could be,” Jack says. “What you don’t see is the gaping chasm in between … and that’s what I found.
Caroline George
Recovery doesn't mean putting your life on hold. Recovery means holding on so you can live your best life.
Brittany Burgunder
You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,” he said finally. “And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing
Naomi Novik
I told Doreen I would not go to the show or the luncheon or the film premiere, but that I would not go to Coney Island either, I would stay in bed. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.
Sylvia Plath
As if Spade's chivalry would allow him to do anything to a woman. The harshest punishment she could imagine him dishing out to Cat would be refusing to open a door for her.
Jeaniene Frost
Our differences are beautiful, yet sometimes connection requires us to focus on our similarities, like the fact that we are all trying, all struggling, all wanting to be seen and to be loved. Perhaps if we start there, with this basic understanding of what it means to be alive, we will grow in our connection to one another and learn to love the beautiful differences that embody our improbable human reality.
Scott Stabile
There is even a certain tendency to punish those who do try to see. A case in point: At the dawn of the sexual revolution, social scientists produced statistical studies purporting to show that children are better off when quarreling parents divorce, that broken homes are just as functional as intact ones, and that cohabitation has no influence on the stability of a subsequent marriage. As anyone conversant with the field now knows, newer and more careful studies show all that to be wildly false. A young, untenured family sociologist whom I know used to circulate the results of these new studies secretly among other scholars. But he asked me and his other friends never to mention his name. Why? Because calling the mirage a mirage is a good way to end a career.
J. Budziszewski
Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.
Allen Ginsberg
Men should think twice before making widowhood women's only path to power.
Gloria Steinem
You’ve gotta believe that the split second that changed your life—the brief moment that took your leg and bruised your melon—can’t be the defining moment of your life. It was just an instant, a flash. Just one second out of millions of seconds. It doesn’t get to own you.
Jennifer Handford
In essence, joy is the quiet confidence that everything will work out right. The best part of being filled with joy is that it's contagious. Your joy overflows. You can't keep it to yourself. It spills over to touch other lives in such a marvelous way. People around you want to be in your company. You lift their spirits!
Dana Arcuri
This was one of those moments when I realized that my emotional baggage, once a few neatly packed pieces, was now like the Joads' truck, stacked high with old clothes, half a rocking chair, a mule, all barely secured with twine.
Amy Cohen
As the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.
Scott Hawkins
Creativity comes from curious, intuitive, persistent action.
Debasish Mridha
Never fall in love with someone that won't fight for you because when the real battles begin they won't pull your heart to safety, but they will their own.
Shannon L. Alder
If you can't control an emotion, it is not yours. You are in control.
Bobbie Kinkead
Who gave fire permission to burn?
Marty Rubin
You made me limitless by creating me again and again.
Debasish Mridha
It’s been you all along, and it’ll be you all the way. Learn to play up your strengths, embrace your flaws, and pursue your passions. Be gentle when your mind, body, or soul are tired. Value your time and surround yourself with those who do too. Above all, give your dreams the same respect you grant to others’. This is the starting point of all great brand builders: self-empathy.
Laura Busche
I don't have a reason to lie to you. Not now.' Jace's gaze remained steady. 'And quit baring your fangs at me. It's making me nervous.''Good,' Simon said. 'If you want to know why it's because you smell like blood.''It's my cologne. Eau de Recent Injury.' Jace raised his left hand. It was a glove of white bandages, stained across the knucles where blood had seeped through.
Cassandra Clare
We’ve yet to comprehend the impervious reality that to gain ‘life’ we have to do the most scandalous thing imaginable, and that is to work ‘against’ the whole of our humanity and give everything away. And yet to give everything away is to work ‘with’ the whole of God’s character.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The problem with setting goals is that they can be limiting.  Perhaps we're asking for something good when God's will is that we be given something great.
Marianne Williamson
It’s okay. Let your ego push you to be the initiator. But tell your ego that the best way to get something shipped is to let other people take the credit. The real win for you (and your ego) is seeing something get shipped, not in getting the credit when it does.
Seth Godin
What is this food in my head, anyway? Let’s see...it’s green and good for you and so delicious. It’s prepared by angels with love. The minute you bite into it, it’s savory, chewy, nourishing, and whole- some. You feel instantly revitalized. A small, tiny amount, just a few bites, rejuvenates every cell, deepens your breath, clears your mind, heals your wounds, and mends your heart. It’s made from joyous plants that voluntarily separate themselves from their stalks, laying themselves at the feet of the approaching gardener who gathers them. They eagerly offer their vital energies to nourish living spirits. The angels in their chef hats, singing mantras, cook it tenderly to retain all the benefits of the generous plants. It’s barely sweet, barely salty, and contains all the freshness of spring herbs, summer fruit, spreading leaves, and burgeoning seeds. It comes premade in bags or boxes...you just open it up, sit down, and enjoy. It’s a full meal, enough maybe for a whole day, maybe for a week, maybe for your family, maybe for your friends and neighbors. It multiplies like loaves and fishes, in little biodegradable containers that vaporize instantly the moment you finish them, without any greenhouse emissions. Nothing to clean up!
Kimber Simpkins
Good artists are always crazy, one way or another.
Garth Risk Hallberg