Quotes by American Authors - Page 1406

People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing. But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours, while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious, temporarily losing command over everything I know and understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.'If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen.They had these people, you know? And they would walk around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost completely, except deep in their minds they would have adventures and experiences that were completely impossible in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would drink a lot of coffee.'So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is regenerating itself.
George Carlin
Behind every successful man is a woman - with nothing to wear.
L. Grant Glickman
I never doubted I would have a roof over my head, a school to go to, enough to to eat, books (and newspapers) to read, a safe neighborhood to play in and a doctor to see if I got sick.My parents and grandparents made sure I knew I was lucky.
Chelsea Clinton
What are you really living for? It's crucial to realize that you either glorify God, or you glorify something or someone else. You're always making something look big. If you don't glorify God when you're involved in a conflict, you inevitably show that someone or something else rules your heart.
Ken Sande
The history of your world is filled with the voice of the victor, the voice of power, although it was not always a voice of sanity, by any means.
Barbara Marciniak
The promised return of Christ should motivate you toward daily holy living.
Jim George
Never confuse someone else's inability to do something with its inability to be done.
Steve Maraboli
Hope is like a bud that holds the hidden beauty of a flower.
Debasish Mridha
Horror is a situation, not a character, no matter how evil one may be.
Rachel Deering
Perhaps what matters is not the human pain or joy at all but, rather, the play of shadow and light on a live body, the harmony of trifles assembled...in a unique and inimitable way.
Vladimir Nabokov
Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.
Chelsey Philpot
The first century was an era of apocalyptic expectation among the Jews of Palestine, the unofficial Roman designation for the vast tract of land encompassing modern day Israel/Palestine as well as large parts of Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon (the land would not be officially called Palestine until after 135 C.E.)
Reza Aslan
Thorn gazed back and forth between the two of us. "You could have left me behind, but you stayed. I won't forget that.
Patrick Carman
It's easy to smile just to make other people feel better. But when a person fakes happy, it has edges. Regular people may not see, but the people who count, they can see the edges and the lines where your smile ends and the real you, the sadness (me) or the anger (Grandma) begins.
Heidi W. Durrow
World-class cereal-eating is a dance of fine compromises. The giant heaping bowl of sodden cereal, awash in milk, is the mark of the novice. Ideally one wants the bone-dry cereal nuggets and the cryogenic milk to enter the mouth with minimal contact and for the entire reaction between them to take place in the mouth. Randy has worked out a set of mental blueprints for a special cereal-eating spoon that will have a tube running down the handle and a little pump for the milk, so that you can spoon dry cereal up out of a bowl, hit a button with your thumb, and squirt milk into the bowl of the spoon even as you are introducing it into your mouth. The next best thing is to work in small increments, putting only a small amount of Cap’n Crunch in your bowl at a time and eating it all up before it becomes a pit of loathsome slime, which, in the case of Cap’n Crunch, takes about thirty seconds.
Neal Stephenson
The most reliable topic for small talk is the goings-on of stars whether they’re rising or falling, and whether nor not a particular story is truth or fiction. This is way out of balance. It invades the privacy of men and women who didn’t give up being human when they became famous, and it negates the meaning inherent in our own lives. (300)
Victoria Moran
Sometimes,well,all the time,I can't think of what to say because I'm so dumb and stuff,and then maybe I think of it like five days later.
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
His noise is getting quieter, but I can still see it there still-See how he feels the skin of my hand against his, see how he wants to take it and press it against his mouth, how he wants to breathe in the smell of me and how beautiful I look to him, how strong after all that illness, and how he wants to just lightly touch my neck, just there, and how he wants to take me in his arms and-"Oh, God," he says, looking away suddenly. "Viola, I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"But I just put my hand to the back of his neck-And he says, "Viola-?"And I pull myself towards him-And I kiss him.And it feels like, finally.
Patrick Ness
I - will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.
Marc Norman
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel... its poverty by how little.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Gustavo Arcos, a loyal revolutionary who was with Castro in the second car when they attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, was shot in his back. The shot severely wounded him and disabled his right leg, thereby causing him a lifetime of pain. A few years later, Arcos went to Mexico with the intention of gathering support as well as money and munitions for the movement. After the revolution, for his loyalty, Gustavo Arcos was appointed the Cuban Ambassador to Belgium. However, as ambassador he became disillusioned with the Soviet form of communism and began to see Castro more as a dictator than a revolutionary leader. When he returned from his duties in Belgium, instead of being able to freely leave Cuba, Arcos was convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison on charges of being a counter-revolutionary. In 1981, after his release from his years of confinement, he attempted to escape from Cuba, for which he was sent back to prison. After his second release, Arcos decided that he could better serve the people of Cuba by staying and accepting the position of the Executive Secretary of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights. His committee rapidly grew from occupying a small office in Havana, to being a nationwide organization recognized by the United Nations. Gustavo Arcos died of natural causes on August 8, 2006, at 79 years of age.
Captain Hank Bracker
The service members who defend our way of life ask very little in return, but they deserve teachers who will be as relentless in teaching their children as the military is in protecting our interests at home and abroad.
Tucker Elliot
Secrets become harder to keep the older you get. The things you think you can suppress, those idiosyncrasies and fantasies you hope no one will ever discover, become harder and harder to hide as the years advance. Partly it is maturity-the fear of discovery grows smaller, less significant, for you learn that none of us is perfect, that human nature is flawed, that life twists and turns in all sorts of unexpected ways and it is okay to end up in a different place to where you expected.
Jane Green
You think you're being brave, you think you're being sexy, you think you're transcending feminism. But that's bullshit. - Susan Brownmiller
Ariel Levy
His grin split even wider. “I’d love the chance to prove you wrong.”And when he did, she’d know what he was thinking. She’d know how much he despised the woman who claimed to be a Vetter and allowed the Commander’s beloved daughter to lifebond with a man who ended up murdering her. Fiona had come to the Wiccan Haus to get away from the public’s hatred and scorn, not see it behind this man’s beautiful smile and feel it no matter how warm and gentle his hands.- Psychic Lies (THE WICCAN HAUS)
Sara Daniel
I've been at some pains to tell you about myself because among other reasons I think we should know who our enemies are. I've known people to spend their lives nursing a hatred of phantoms and they were not happy people.
Cormac McCarthy
The thing about learning how to fight is that— some of us are not born with that desire. They say some are born fighters; but they don't usually point out that others just aren't. Some of us are forced by life to take up arms and fight. Many of us are. The art lies in knowing when to wield those arms and when to put them down. I don't think it's a matter of pretending to be ideally unharmed by life and untouched by darkness; because that is hypocrisy. Rather, I think it is a matter of being true to your truth and learning when to fight and learning when to be soft. Hopefully, our soft moments in life will largely outweigh, outrank, and outrun our fighting.
C. JoyBell C.
States of the atmosphere pass into us as water through the meshes of a sieve, and storms occur in us before they break upon the world without, creating restless sensations. ("Absolute Evil")
Julian Hawthorne
The scene is most beautiful without people in it. People just screw things up. Forget the whole thing, the world, all the living people, I tell myself, and it has a ring of truth to it. The dead are better, aren't they? The dead don't betray or harm. They've already done all they can do. I can't figure out what people mean or who they are or whether they can be trusted, so, forget them. Don't even try anymore. For now at least, forget the living.
Jael McHenry
Don't focus on who let you down. Appreciate who lifted you up. Don't focus on who darkened your days. Appreciate who brightened them.
Karen Salmansohn
Never boyfriends? You've NEVER been in LOVE?"As I shake my head no, I look out the window, yearning to see Cole's sun-filled eyes again looking into mine."Don't worry," Tiger said. "Love isn't easy- and it happens on its own time. Just hang in there. He’ll come around.
Giorge Leedy
Challenges bring opportunity for growth.
Theresa Larsen
Thanks cows. I appreciate your tastiness.
Craig Ferguson
Make peace with your past so you don't mess up the present!
Marcia Casar Friedman
The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing.
Bernd Heinrich
Once bitten, totally smitten.
Mari Mancusi
My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveil A third event to me,So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell.Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson
Maybe the ultimate wound is the one that makes you miss the war you got it in.
Sebastian Junger
Reality works in this fashion: what you hold in your mind – the self-image,hopes and expectations, world view, beliefs, fears, feelings and all else – becomes realized in your life, continuously.
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
Finding the right healing path requires all or nothing. Once you place conditions on healing, all you can achieve is conditional healing.
Caroline Myss
I'd much rather be hold up with a ball of yarn, tucked inside the safety of the house with my mother. Out there, you must come to grips with the rot and bone, bloom and disintegration. It's part of the world, this ruthlessness, this severed leg, this sun-bleached skull. I can't really stand it. All the signs point toward change, and all that means is death. - 140-141
Robin Romm
It seems to me that the moralist is the most useless and contemptible of creatures. He is useless in that he would expend his energies upon making judgments rather than upon gaining knowledge, for the reason that judgment is easy and knowledge is difficult. He is contemptible in that his judgments reflect a vision of himself which in his ignorance and pride he would impose upon the world. I implore you, do not become a moralist; you will destroy your art and your mind.
John Williams
I am still learning, for the Christian life is one of constant growth.
Billy Graham
Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me -- I certainly would.
Julie Powell
I wanted to talk to someone. But who? It’s moments like this, when you need someone the most, that your world seems smallest.
Rachel Cohn
As the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, so the denial of God is the height of foolishness.
R.C. Sproul
Wanting to give her the best fit I could, I sand the knowledge I had learned from Snow Flower. "Everyone needs clothing-no matter how cool it is in summer or how warm it is in winter-so make clothes for others without being asked. Even if the table is plentiful, let your in-laws eat first. Work hard and remember three things: Be god to your in-laws and always show respect, be good to your husband and always weave for him, be good to your children and always be a model of decorum to them. If you do these things, your new family will treat you kindly. In that fine home, be calm of heart.
Lisa See
Look for the little loves. Find and shape the little bitternesses.
Ray Bradbury
I realized at that moment - observing his form move further away without once turning back - that I’d already begun to rebuild the imaginary wall between us. I was shielding my heart with stone cold feelings again, the only way I knew to protect it. I still planned to try my hand at prayer. If God would grant me this one request, if I could keep my only friend, I would give anything in return, even the treasured books trapped beneath my arm. I’d tasted enough of a dismal life to know that a real, true friend was of greater worth than the collection of every imagined fairytale in the world.
Richelle E. Goodrich
What are you doing?”“Whatever I want.
Cherise Sinclair
Relationship is understanding. It is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself -- to be is to be related.
Bruce Lee
If you please God, it does not matter whom you displease. And if you displease Him, it does not matter whom you please.
Steven J. Lawson
Patriotism is the surefire wingnut that binds our diverse society. Rulers historically used patriotism to manipulate the populous. Patriotism serves as the trump card to justify going to war and mandatory inscription of young men into military service. Patriotism is becoming synonyms with state justified coercion and murder of less powerful people.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Believe in yourself. Know you have what it takes, to make excellence a good habit. Focus on doing excellent work and use discipline to make it happen.
Mark F. LaMoure
Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.
John Grogan
To cut off the confusion and accept an answer just because it's too scary not to have an answer is a good way to get the wrong answer.
Janet Jackson
O Heavenly Children, God's messengers are as limitless as the fish in the sea. They come in all colors, regions, languages and creeds. But their message is one and the same, don't you see? He only wishes to unite all His children under one family tree.
Suzy Kassem
Wherever mom is, there is my heart and my home.
Debasish Mridha
A minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the common level of the useful citizen - no oracle at all but a man of more than average moral instincts who if he knows anything knows how little he knows.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.
John Corey Whaley