Quotes by American Authors - Page 1515

Every leader will hit a series of plateaus in their lives. The key is not to say there, because settling on a plateau can easily lead to an elongated season of comfort. Being comfortable is one of the leader's worst enemies
Gary Rohrmayer
You can teach a person all you know, but only experience will convince him that what you say is true.
Richelle E. Goodrich
While I have the floor, here's a question that's been bothering me for some time. Why do so few writers of heroic or epic fantasy ever deal with the fundamental quandary of their novels . . . that so many of them take place in cultures that are rigid, hierarchical, stratified, and in essence oppressive? What is so appealing about feudalism, that so many free citizens of an educated commonwealth like ours love reading about and picturing life under hereditary lords?, such as flush toilets, movable type, or electricity for every home in the kingdom? Given half a chance, the sons and daughters of peasants would rather not grow up to be servants. It seems bizarre for modern folk to pine for a way of life our ancestors rightfully fought desperately to escape.
David Brin
Those who are loving become beloved.
Debasish Mridha
Despite several millennia of building best business practices, despite all the analysis and planning, and forced discipline and structure, what makes us human will never be cleaved from how work gets done.
Bill Jensen
To an onlooker, his face would be unreadable, but to me I know that look. His thoughts roll around his head like a frantic ball as he considers each excuse he'll give me. At this moment I wish I were the onlooker, a stranger, I know he can't quit for good, not yet. He's searching for the perfect sentence, the perfect touch to bid time until I'm safely sucked into his trap. When he reaches me, he doesn't ask for permission, he pulls me into a hug, wrapping his arms around my back and pulling me into his chest. He's willing me to forget—to forgive because somewhere deep down, he knows this time I won't.
Brittany Butler
If I am seeking to get identity from you ,I will watch you too closely, listen to you too intently, and need you to fundamentally. I will ride the roller coaster of your best and worst moments and everything in between. And because I am watching you too closely, I will become acutely aware of your weaknesses and failures. I will become overly critical, frustrated, disappointed, hopeless, and angry. I will be angry not because you are a sinner but because you have failed to deliver the one thing I seek from you: identity. But none of us will ever get the well-being that comes from knowing who we are from our relationships. Instead we will be left with damaged relationships filled with hurt, frustration and anger.
Paul David Tripp
When they say whatever you say may be used against you, they mean it!
Kenneth Eade
Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.
Piers Anthony
As soon as he stood in front of her, she folded her arms and looked cross.t"You don't have any gardening skills. You turned down a prestigious job to weed the garden?t"I will be rewarded richly in treasures untold."tShe raised a brow.t"I've heard dragon-shifters pay a lot of money to merchants and the like.t"Aaagh, but you are also a dragon-shifter of a sort. tYes, but I am a gardener, which means I don't go on high-risk missions to earn my gold.
Terry Spear
you don’t put demands on people and you never say anything negative--ever. So many people suck the life out of everyone they’re around, but you don’t do that. You give people strength just by being you.
Matthew Quick
The sexier the other woman is, the more jealous your wife gets. And that's where slut shaming comes from. When a woman is too sexually attractive, when she's too good at attracting the attention of the opposite sex, other women will shame her for it, because they are afraid she will steal their men.
Oliver Markus
In a room with many windowssome thoughts slide past uncatchable, ghostly.
Jane Hirshfield
In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.
Kristin Cashore
We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win, we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluable, we, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable, and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred conviction that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them as every men with a heart must respect those who give all for their belief.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Daemon!" Dee called from the kitchen. "I need your help!""We should go see what she's doing before she destroys your kitchen." He rubbed his hands down his face. "It's possible.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
Time to get a go on this drop-dead-gorgeous morning.
Coco J. Ginger
People generally didn't cheat in good relationships.
Emily Giffin
Service Beyond Self. Value others; have a heart of service and generosity. Rise above self-interest. Ask what you can do for others, not what they can do for you.
Susan C.Young
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If you fill the atmosphere with toxins, then you really cannot be surprised if the solar radiation transmission through it becomes toxic to humans.
Steven Magee
You were a warrior, you are a warrior, you will always be a warrior!
Jerry Gladstone
Marvin: – La necrofilia ce l’abbiamo sepolta dentro. Uno dei miei libri, Storia della tortura e della morte, parla delle atrocità che abbiamo commesso in nome della giustizia e della vendetta. Spesso erano peggiori dei crimini originali. L’uomo è un animale sanguinario.
Joe R. Lansdale
Let truth be told. The more we allow water to be controlled, bottled and sold — the more we sell the security of our sons, daughters and souls. He who controls the water, controls us all. Water is the true gold.
Suzy Kassem
What to AcceptThe fact of mountains. The actualityOf any stone — by kicking, if necessary. The need to ignore stupid people, While restraining one's natural impulseTo murder them. The change from your dollar, Be it no more than a penny, For without a pretense of universal penuryThere can be no honor between rich and poor.Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.The inevitability of cancer and/orHeart disease. The dialogue as written, Once you've taken the role. Failure, Gracefully. Any hospitalityYou're willing to return. The airEach city offers you to breathe.The latest hit. Assistance.All accidents. The end.
Thomas M. Disch
Wow,” Wesley said. We were lying in his bed only a few minutes after we’d finished, with a foot or more space between our bodies. “I definitely wasn’t expecting that.”God, he ruined everything when he talked. Annoyed, and still wading through the emotional repercussions, I sneered. “What? Ashamed that you screwed the Duff?”“No.” I was surprised by how serious he sounded. “I’m never ashamed of anyone I sleep with. Sex is a natural chemical reaction. It always happens for a reason. Who am I to dictate who experiences the joy of sharing my bed?” He didn’t see me roll my eyes as he continued. “No, I just meant that I’m shocked. I was honestly starting to believe that you hated me.”“I do hate you,” I assured him, kicking off the covers and moving to pick up my clothes.“You must not hate me too much,” Wesley said, rolling onto his elbow and watching me dress. “You did pretty much throw yourself at me. Generally, hatred doesn’t inspire that kind of passion.”I pulled on my T-shirt. “Believe me, Wesley, I definitely hate you. I was just using you. You use people all the time, so I’m sure you understand.” I buttoned my jeans and grabbed my alligator clip from the nightstand. “This was fun, but if you ever tell anyone, I swear I’ll castrate you.
Kody Keplinger
Success is living what you believe.
Teresa Collins
The new information technology, indifferent to human suffering, does not accommodate humane needs unless we harness it and make it do so.
Mahnaz Afkhami
You’re everything I’ve ever wanted, Pigeon.”“Just remember that when I take all of your money in the next poker game,” I said, pulling off my shirt.
Jamie McGuire
Your future begins with your next thought.
Bryant McGill
We are not sure what we will become, only what we want to and don’t want to. We often become what we never thought we could, then we become fine with that.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Within the first few months I discovered that being a president is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep riding or be swallowed.
Harry S. Truman
I acknowledge that a wife does (and should) exercise a degree of control in the family and home; but what I present is not a constructive form aimed at supporting a healthy relationship, but a destructive form that—whether intended or not—destroys a relationship through the invocation of fear and flight rather than love and commitment. I also propose that this method or “device” (as I have called it) was learned in part from a very young age from her parents.
H. Kirk Rainer
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation a mental or physical barter to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
W.H. Auden
Peace is the friend we find in silence.
Bryant McGill
A hunt leader could not show fear, or let it linger in his stomach, for others would sense it soon enough, taste that fear and become possessed by it. They would hesitate when an order was given, and uncertainty would claim their life as readily as the blade of the enemy.
Raymond E. Feist
Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, but how much happens beyond that book, I can’t say. That’s agnosticism in its bleakest and most honest form. Don’t judge me, yet believe me when I tell you that years of abuse tend to wring out every ounce of one’s ability to understand and adhere to faith in standard form.
Chila Woychik
I passed out from stress? That’s it?”“I believe the princess term is fainted,” said Thorne.
Marissa Meyer
Many men beg for a job but have no clue what hard work really means.
Bill Courtney
I will forever remind you that you are gifted, strong and beautiful, exactly as you are.Will you forever remind yourself, too?
Scott Stabile
This is the best worst time of my life.
Jewel
I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy." I had been tracked, like a bear. "Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said. "I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops." A really inept bear.
Maureen Johnson
Pay your bills, yes. But don't invest in them. Invest in your dreams. What you invest in grows.
Suzette R. Hinton
It always pisses me off when I’m calling in to some Morning Zoo radio show to promote God-only-knows what—probably this book, so get ready, I’m comin’—when the DJ actually tries to convince me that there are as many female comics as male ones. Cue hypermasculine Morning Zoo Hacky McGee voice: “So Kath, I don’t know what you chicks are always complaining about.” To which I respond: “Really? Why don’t you call your local comedy club and ask for the Saturday night lineup? I guarantee you the male to female ratio is going to be about nine to one. You dick-wad.
Kathy Griffin
It took me thirty years to find myself, I had little wealth, But I had my health
Charmaine J.Forde
I would suggest that our imagination is a tiny shard of God’s infinite genius that we have within us simply because we were created in God’s image.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working m
Carl Sagan
It's better to be one who is told to wait than one who waits to be told.
John G. Miller
Like the tightly closed eyelids of a child trying to escape the reprimand of a parent, there is a part of the mind that needs to shut down in the face of an internal dialogue that is steeped in guilt, shame, and self-loathing.
Darren Main
Sometimes a friendship is more like a war.
Kelly Link
Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)
André Aciman
My emotions are invisible, untouchable—invincible even—and their power far outweighs my own. And so it seems unfair that for all the little I can do to them, they can do so much to me.
Kelseyleigh Reber
If you look around you at the physical universe, you will see that it's nature is growth. Everything from the cells in your body to the planets orbiting the sun are constantly growing, constantly changing, constantly evolving. Nothing stays still. Nothing remains the same. So think about it - why would your life be the exception? Why would you be the only thing that exists in all of creation whose purpose isn't to grow?
Barbara De Angelis
Rod Cockshutt, Professor Emeritus at N.C. State University called my book, Evidence of Insanity, "an extraordinary achievement" and told me to not change the last 10-15 pages no matter what.
carol piner
There are no rules when it comes to survival
Mary E. Pearson
And since when is stealing people's possessions the call of God? you are all hypocrites who have suddenly come into power, and you don't know how to handle it
Dalia Sofer
I know what you are. I've always known from the beginning, Kushiel's Chosen. It is folly, to make claim on one whom the gods have marked for their own. And unlike the others, I am no fool, to grasp at that which burns to the touch. What you have given..." she raised one hand, palm upward, the garnet seal dangling at her wrist, "... I hold in an open hand.
Jacqueline Carey
To keep your marriage brimming,With love in the loving cup,Whenever you're wrong, admit it;Whenever you're right, shut up."~Happy birthday Ogden Nash! (born 8.19.1902)
Ogden Nash
I don’t want to live— 
I want to love first, and live…incidentally.
Zelda Fitzgerald
Be game--take a chance--don't hide behind veils and veils of discretion... Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy--or quit. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing--not to settle and accept.
Robert Henri