Quotes by American Authors - Page 1521

While many people are proud of being self-made, it only explains all the flaws.
Ron Brackin
Learn to enjoy this tidying process. I don't like to write; I like to have written. But I love to rewrite. I especially like to cut: to press the DELETE key and see an unnecessary word or phrase or sentence vanish into the electricity. I like to replace a humdrum word with one that has more precision or color. I like to strengthen the transition between one sentence and another. I like to rephrase a drab sentence to give it a more pleasing rhythm or a more graceful musical line. With every small refinement I feel that I'm coming nearer to where I would like to arrive, and when I finally get there I know it was the rewriting, not the writing, that wont the game.
William Zinsser
The older I got the more I appreciated the role of travel as a stimulus to memories, and the way in which journeys even to new places were somehow always awakening memories of places seen in an ever-receding past.
Michael Jacobs
You can choose better relationships, better jobs, better places to live, better uses of your time and better ways of treating yourself.
Bryant McGill
A citizen at his home in Rockford, Illinois, or Boulder, Colorado, could read a newspaper, listen to a radio, or watch the round-the-clock coverage on television, but he had no way of connecting with those who shared his views. Nor was there a quick, readily available tool for an ordinary citizen to gather information on his own. In 1960, communication was a one-way street, and information was fundamentally inaccessible. The whole idea of summoning up data or reaching thousands of individuals with the touch of a finger was a science-fiction fantasy.
Jeff Greenfield
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
Khaled Hosseini
My real feeling, the one I couldn't articulate yet, was that my entire life hinged on knowing that there were people who would continue to love me unconditionally, even if I were damaged, even if I were sick. Such love was the only thing that had sustained me during the turmoil of the past months. If I eliminated my child because of his disability, if I put him out of my life, I would be violating the only thing that was keeping me alive.
Martha N. Beck
Think you can think you can't either way you'll be right.
Henry Ford
Noah had wandered down the aisle, but now he gleefully returned with a snow globe. He stood behind Ronan until he pushed off the shelf to admire the atrocity. "Glitter," whispered Noah reverentially, giving it a shake.
Maggie Stiefvater
We can see for ourselves how beautiful we both are.
Gordon Merrick
I'm in love with someone good and kind and gentle, and he's seen the darkness too, but somehow we've become each other's light.
Emma Forrest
I can’t help but think that if she was going to kill herself, she might as well have done it earlier. Perhaps when I was a toddler. Or better yet, an infant. It certainly would have made my life easier. I asked my uncle Hugh (who is not really my uncle, but he is married to the stepsister of my current mother’s brother’s wife and he lives quite closeand he’s a vicar) if I would be going to hell for such a thought. He said no, that frankly, it made a lot of sense to him. I do think I prefer his parish to my own.
Julia Quinn
Your opinion should be based on what you see with your own eyes, hear with your own ears & feel with your own heart.
Tanya Masse
Appetite knows what it craves, without cerebral embellishment. It tends not to waste any time laying hold of its tools. That was the thing I had recognised here: appetite. I recognised it precisely because, in a context like this, it was so unfamiliar. It had forced me to rule out everything else. And there was a second reason for my recognition, which because unprecedented was not recognition at all, but astounding discovery: Martha's face told me. I saw appetite there...
Susan Choi
Everything is touched by the holy when it is in the presence of death.
Karl Marlantes
They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. Good night.
Harper Lee
Amnesia was a soldier's best friend, and luckily, it could be taught. Missing limbs still ache, but missing memories never do.
Alex London
..."Dont marry an orange and expect him to turn into an apple." If you want an orange, great. If not, put him back in the proverbial fruit bowl for someone else to enjoy and move on.
Amy E. Spiegel
Marketing and promoting doesn’t come down to the likes, the pins, the plus ones, the followers, the fans, the friends, the views, or the plays online. Marketing and promoting comes down to the conversions.
Loren Weisman
Truth and trust are the means by which civilization holds off barbarism.
Mercedes Lackey
You can't see both sides of one coin at once, can you, child? The god of money always keeps a secret.The god of money was also the god of spies.
Marie Rutkoski
To be subjected to pain that threatens to exceed coping resources is not something that people choose.
David L. Conroy
Myths are different than fairy tales or legends. Legends are stories based in history and are more or less true. Myths, on the other hand, are stories containing a deeper truth—stories that transcend time. If you were to travel the world, you would find myths that are remarkably similar to one another—stories of heroes fighting the darkness with the light.
Seth Adam Smith
It remains for you to save one before saving others, to lead one before leading others.
Dan Groat
A mistake is the name we give to any action in which we perceive a difference between what we intended and what has occurred. Intention fuels every dramatic action, including the writing of dramatic stories, which involves a series of dramatic actions. In the course of writing, or finding, the story that wants to get itself told, it behooves the writer to liberate the characters by finding the faith and courage necessary for setting aside one’s own conscious needs and expectations. Not to do so promotes ‘mistakes’ - i.e: confusion born of some incoherence in the emotional logic of the story). As the writer abandons his/her intentions - no matter how noble they may seem - only then does that most strange and ineffable quality we so casually refer to as ‘the magic’ have a chance of entering the story, and rendering even the ‘mistakes’ stimulating, daring and provocative.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
To see in the dark, close your eyes.
J.R. Rim
Well, then, Otter, of course I don’t like Bundt cake. It has eggs in it. Baby chicken eggs. You don’t see chickens standing outside of maternity wards waiting to get our babies to make their Bundt cake, do you?
T.J. Klune
And from the look on his face I could see he was one of the lucky ones, one of those people who like doing what they're good at. That's rare. When you see that in a person, you can't miss it.
David Wroblewski
And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again; for this is the message given you by the Gods, the karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Watch an Ant, Watch the bees, feel wind move the leaves. Touch your smile above your chin from the glorious world we all live in.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
No one is fighting for my freedom unless they are doing it on my soil.
Ashly Lorenzana
I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who WANTS to know all your stories.
Gabrielle Zevin
September suddenly realized something. "But Ell, Orrery begins with O! How can you know so much about it?"The Wyverary soared high, his neck stretching into a long red ribbon, full of words and pies and relief and flying."I'm growing up!" he cried.
Catherynne M. Valente
They were all highly respectable in their professions and, together, practically unstoppable. But most importantly, they were on her side. She couldn't feel more blessed....or anxious. She sighed. *in italics* Forgive me, Lord, for being so antsy. For worrying, I know it adds nothing to my life or any help to the situation at hand, but it's my friend's disappearance that we're investigating, and I don't know where to start. I don't want to choose the wrong lead. Please direct our investigation and help me to bring Skylar home. I'm the reason she is the way she is. Please don't let it be too late. *end italics*
Dani Pettrey
Writing is my life. Life is my hobby.
Emma Lai
Imogene always sitson the remote. It’s probably wedged between her butt cheeks.”“Should I go get a crowbar?
Kirsten Miller
We are what we are. Nothing more, nothing less. There is good and evil among every kind of people. It's the evil among us who rule now.
Anne Bishop
I prayed for death so as not to live in madness.
Andrew Krivak
I love you and I will until the end of time.And just as she said the words, two bright stars drifted past them overhead and disappeared into the night sky together…
Danielle Steel
Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone — but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You’re left an empty shell. You’re left with nothing.
Rachel Van Dyken
Food’s the killer. The clock starts as soon as the troops are on the ground. You wouldn’t believe how fast they consume what they’re carrying, and then … if I don’t get them more, if I don’t find them more … they die.
Henry V. O'Neil
Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all the fibres and roots of our being. Every minute of the day adds fresh crimes to the calendar, both those which are detected and punished, and those which are not. The criminal hunts down the criminal. The judge condemns the judger. The innocent torture the innocent. Everywhere, in every family, every tribe, every great community, crimes, crimes, crimes. War is clean by comparison. The hangman is a gentle dove by comparison. Attila, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan reckless automatons by comparison. Your father, your darling mother, your sweet sister: do you know the foul crimes they harbor in their breasts? Can you hold the mirror to iniquity when it is close at hand? Have you looked into the labyrinth of your own despicable heart? Have you sometimes envied the thug for his forthrightness? The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you. The source of it is God whom you place outside, above and beyond. Crime is identification, first with God, then with your own image.
Henry Miller
To accept a little death is worse than death itself.
Frank Herbert
. . I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in.”Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac. “This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry shark.”“Then use a harpoon.
Loretta Chase
The power of evil was nothing more than a tangible thing, something that given the strength of will, could be broken as easily as glass.
Nathan Robinson
Take the path less traveled and learn from your mistakes. Don’t just let life happen around you; control your future. Learn to ask questions, set small goals, and dream of big ones. Absorb any criticism and let it fuel you. Convince others that you are worthy of your dream, and show them that you are willing to put up a damn good fight for it.
Matthew T. Cross
Make today and all your tomorrows count, so you never have to waste another minute regretting your yesterdays.
Lorri Faye
What you realize is that everyone has her own priorities—her own constituency. Often, being a leader is not about making grand proclamations or telling people what to do; it’s about balancing all these priorities and constituencies.
Alyssa Mastromonaco
It's just me throwing myself at you,romance as usual, us times us,not lust but moxibustion,a substance burning closeto the body as possiblewithout risk of immolation.
Alice Fulton
But somewhere in America, between the freeways and the Food-4-Less, between the filling stations and the 5-o-'clock news, behind the blue blinking light coming off the TV, there is a space, an empty space, between us, around us, inside us, that inevitable, desperate, begs to be filled up. And nothing, not shame, not God, not a new microwave, not a wide-screen TV or that new diet with grapefruits, can ever, ever fill it. Underneath all that white noise there's a lack.
Andrea Portes
One of the big lies with sin is that we are already waist-deep and might as well just plunge in.
Matt Chandler
He would never be any different and now Scarlett realize the truth and accepted it without emotion—that until he died Gerald would always be waiting for Ellen, always listening for her. Her was in some dim borderline country where time was standing still and Ellen was always in the next room. The mainspring of his existence was taken away when she died and with it has gone his bounding assurance, his impudence and his restless vitality. Ellen was the audience before which the blustering drama of Gerald O'Hara had been played Now the curtain had been rung down forever, the footlights dimmed and the audience suddenly vanished, while the stunned old actor remained on his empty stage, waiting for his cues.
Margaret Mitchell
Life is ephemeral like the journey of a dew drop. We must not forget to glitter.
Debasish Mridha
To do the useful thing to say the courageous thing to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
T.S Eliot
NW" is full of split selves, people alienated from the very things they thought defined them. Their nostalgia -- for old movies, old songs, buses they don't ride anymore -- is less a salve than a form of pain.
Christian Lorentzen
Delarosa was trying to save the human race," said Mkele. "Her only crime was that she was willing to go too far in order to do it. We decided, briefly, that we didn't want to go along with her, but look at us: We're hiding in a basement, letting Delarosa fight our battles, seriously considering lettering her deploy a nuclear bomb. We are long past the point where we can pick and choose our morality. We either save our species or we don't.""Yes," said Tovar, "but I'd prefer it if we were still worth saving by the end of it.
Dan Wells
    "You ever been arrested before?"    "No sir. This is my first time."    "The first time this week, you mean."    "Oh, I been arrested in Michigan. I thought you meant in Illinois. I never been arrested in Illinois. I never did no wrong in Illinois."    "What good does that do you?"    "It don't. It's just that I love my state so much I go to Michigan to steal," he explained with an expression almost beatific.
Nelson Algren
And I didn't tell mom what happened. She'd already warned me that bad things could hide in the most unlikely places.
Lorraine Zago Rosenthal
You may not lead by ordering, but you may lead by showing possibilities and the beauty of success.
Debasish Mridha
It was starting to seem to her that being "forward-thinking" too often involved avoiding any kind of thought at all - especially about things that might benefit from a great deal of thinking.
Kristin Cashore