Quotes by American Authors - Page 1504

Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
Thomas A. Edison
It's important for someone who could play the game - and win - to say: 'the game isn't worth shit.
Gloria Steinem
I think sometimes, being silent and watching, can change a person.
Shannon Hale
Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren’t flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is.
Craig Hart
I chose to spend the day with you. And I'm choosing now to have dinner with you.
Lisa Brown Roberts
There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent “what if” scenarios--what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?--because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency.
Louis Menand
In medieval times, contrary to popular belief, most knights were bandits, mercenaries, lawless brigands, skinners, highwaymen, and thieves. The supposed chivalry of Charlemagne and Roland had as much to do with the majority of medieval knights as the historical Jesus with the temporal riches and hypocrisy of the Catholic Church, or any church for that matter. Generally accompanied by their immoral entourage or servants, priests, and whores, they went from tourney to tourney like a touring rock and roll band, sports team, or gang of South Sea pirates. Court to court, skirmish to skirmish, rape to rape. Fighting as the noble's substitution for work.
Tod Wodicka
Limited money and family obligations have never stopped a man who really wanted to do something, although they provide excuses for a man who is not really up to the creative challenge in the first place. Find out today whether you are willing to do what it takes.
David Deida
Authorship of anything apart from God is nothing more than a tragedy in the making.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
You'll be in good hands with the colonel, you'll see."The colonel? Okay, I was obviously stuck in a Gone With the Wind theme park. Or maybe a Kentucky Fried Chicken farm.Or I was simply hallucinating...
J.R. Rain
You are always on the verge of an adventure so dare to find it with true joy.
Debasish Mridha
You gotta look out for number one, but don't step in number two!
Rodney Dangerfield
At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he's seventy he still wants to reform the world but he knows he can't.
Clarence S. Darrow
The path towards living in a spiritual manner begins by eliminating inculcated cultural biases, destroying personal illusions, and gratefully accepting the world without sentimental artifice. Emotional detachment provides for clarity of vision.
Kilroy J. Oldster
What if evangelical mega churches became known around the world for things like providing water access for entire countries or fighting to end the AIDS pandemic? Imagine what integrity that would give to the good news we preach, especially the gospel that Jesus declares is good news to the poor.
Shane Claiborne
Vibrations caused by powerful turbines stirred Kathy from a dream centered around a funeral. Her eyes flicked open, face dry, and she had no idea where she was. In her dream, she saw crystalline silver spiders again, weaving their way through the graveyard, leaving trails of silver webs over corpses, binding them for some unknown purpose in the cold dark earth.
Michael Offutt
If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother with her teeth out.
George Brett
But Hannah's friend didn’t understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn’t understand Hannah’s stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn’t understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn’t hurt, didn’t cry, didn’t spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah’s best ideas—sometimes her only ideas—were buried beneath the skin.
Jake Vander-Ark
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir Nabokov
The jangle of the telephone rousted Matt out of a deep sleep. He never dreamed. Dreams were too messy.
Peggy Webb
Love is only made more valuable by the risk of heartbreak.
Alessandra Torre
Luz's manner of speaking made it clear that she had no idea what she might say next. It wasn't that she made things up, strictly speaking--only that facts were merely a point of departure for her.
Daniel Alarcón
She wasn't where she had been. She wasn't where she was going, but she was on her way.
Jodi Hills
One must acknowledge with cryptography no amount of violence will ever solve a math problem.
Jacob Appelbaum
You want to be bad, angel? I can teach you every position it comes in
Debra Anastasia
... He was not for that moment a human being, but a frenzied creature possessed by rage, turned into an animal. All that could be seen in him was the urge to hurt, and it was, as it always will be, the most dreadful sight in the world.
Susan Cooper
Water is sacred to all Human Beings. If you do not have water, you cannot have life. I always remember to honor and pour the water because it is traditional.
Autumn Morning Star
It is sad that in this world people put great merit in what a person has more than what a person is.
Heather Wolf
A word has its use Or like a man it will soon have a grave.
Edward Arlington Robinson
Maybe that was the best part. The beautiful peace that came with living her own story, knowing every turn of the page and tug of the heart was a new beginning.
Melissa Tagg
Silly little monster” all would say.They’d scratch its head and turn awayuntil it snatched their tiny noses.They couldn’t even smell the roses!Ever after, every childdreaded monsters, fierce or mild.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The body is not a product. It is an experience.
Daniele Bolelli
Make doing your best a habit, and you’ll never know not doing your best.
Carew Papritz
There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee
He smoothed his fingers along her jawline and lifted her chin, kissing her gently, testing.tLindsey went light-headed with the rush of sensation, the touch of his lips leaving her longing for more. Clutching his shirt in her fingers - napkin and all - she pulled him closer, melting into his kiss. Carden took it from tentative to tender, then parted her lips with the velvety sweep of his tongue. She matched his languid rhythm, hypnotized. He was all chocolate and caramel, creamy cool and sweet.t'Sinfully delicious'.tNo doubt he was 31 flavors of trouble, but resisting him seemed impossible.
Tracy March
Our families cannot choose Christ for us. Our friends cannot do it. God is a great God, but even God can’t make the decision for us . . .we have to make our own choice.
Billy Graham
Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one holding it. Thus one craves what by seeing one has in fact not seen.
Mark Z. Danielewski
Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.
Sarah Addison Allen
Nothing can give you peace if there is no calmness in your mind.
Debasish Mridha
Prot: I'm not tired.Brewer: I am.Prot: Perhaps you're getting too much sleep. All your beings seem to sleep a lot. Is that because it's so awful to be awake?
Gene Brewer
All that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother.
Abraham Lincoln
The crowd was getting hysterical, so I reached into my back pocket and flippe open my wallet to reveal my badge. "Official business," I announced. "Please leave the area." This had the desired effect; it deescalated the mood and prompted most of the crowd to disperse. It's funny what a plastic badge and a meaningless phrase can do. The authority of the police is anothe mass delusion that can be useful at times. I hadn't even needed to claim I was a cop; all it took was a couple of simple cues to invoke the delusion.
Robert Kroese
I touch her cheek to slow the kiss down, holding her mouth on mine so I can feel every place where our lips touch and every place where they pull away. I savor the air we share in the second afterwards and the slip of her nose across mine. I think of something to say, but it is too intimate, so I swallow it. A moment later I decide I don't care. "I wish we were alone," I say as I back out of the cell. She smiles. "I almost always wish that.
Veronica Roth
Artist communities love to bullshit each other and glad-hand one another, and there's no room for the crippling honesty of comedy."I'm a painter" -- well... you don't...probably need to do that.. . . if you're painting something that doesn't exist, I understand that, I can appreciate- . . . but if your pain- 'oh, it's a barnyard scene in autumn'--well then just take a picture of a barn in autumn! It's way better than a painting! - Before Turning the Gun on Himself [2012]
Doug Stanhope
The women I’m attracted to have to know their worth. That measurement can only be weighed from the inside, and when that’s taken into account and she truly appreciates it? Everything on the outside of her becomes an asset.
Riley Murphy
We only have one desire, which wants to manifest in thousands of ways,like a flower who blooms in billions of shadesto express her only one desire...to be beautiful
Debasish Mridha
There is no future in any job. The future lies in the person who holds the job.
George Crane
That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.
Sarah Dessen
This forest silence improves anyone.
Robert M. Pirsig
I understand the gist of your speculation,' said Rhialto. 'It is most likely nuncupatory.
Jack Vance
Please don´t drown into his fears, his concrete fists don´t let him again, break the bridge of your nose with his cruel born hits. Then disappear into that mask of misery.
Anthony Liccione
Great leaders are teachable leaders.
Gary Rohrmayer
Hospital vigils inspire us to such nostalgia. Hospital vigils take place in slow-time during which the mind floats free, a frail balloon drifting into the sky as into infinity.
Joyce Carol Oates
In everything, depend upon yourself, but work in harmony with all things. Do not depend even upon the Infinite, but learn to work and live in harmony with the Infinite. The highest teachings of the Christ reveal most clearly the principle that no soul was created to be a mere helpless instrument in the hands of Supreme Power, but that every soul should act and live in perfect oneness with that Power. And the promise is that we all are not only to do the things that Christ did, but even greater things.
Christian D. Larson
cheered by the optimism that one sometimes had at the beginning of strenuous exercise, a kind of helium that filled our lungs and carried us along
Viet Thanh Nguyen
I will have to admit, though, that I will never look at an apple in quite the same way.
Terry Goodkind
America is not another word for Opportunity to all her sons.
W.E.B. Du Bois
As a writer, I see the saga of your life in a single glimpse. It may be inaccurate, but my version doesn't lack for creativity.
Richelle E. Goodrich
You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.
James Thurber
How does a poor country defeat rich ones?” “Indeed, the answer is not by acquiring wealth in the sense that France has it.” “Meaning vineyards, farms, peasants, cows?” “But rather to play a sort of trick and redefine wealth to mean something novel.” “Currency!” “Indeed.
Neal Stephenson