Quotes by American Authors - Page 1568

Most people don’t think most of the time. They just use other people’s thoughts as a crutch to get by.
Debasish Mridha
There's my baby!" I cried, quite carried away, "There's my poochiekins!"..."Sadie," My dad said firmly, "Please do not refer to the devourer of souls as 'poochiekins'.
Rick Riordan
What made them particularly unusual was the way Steve presented them. He was rational and fluent and had given much thought to the problems he was discussing, although he had not thought about the implications of the thing – that this was socially deviant conduct of the highest order, involving injuries and maiming and the destruction of property., I don’t think he understood the implications; I don’t think he would have acknowledged them as valid.
Bill Buford
The computer may be incompetent in itself--that is, unable to do the work for which it was designed. This kind of incompetence can never be eliminated, because the Peter Principle applies in the plants where computers are designed and manufactured.
Laurence J. Peter
I want them to see the magic of how everything is related: To walk out into the night and see the Green Corn Moon levitate across the sky.
Autumn Morning Star
Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.
Augusten Burroughs
People in science fiction flicks always seemed to know useful things about the places time travel took them. But what if the time traveler had been only an average history student? What then?
Tad Williams
Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbours.
Henry David Thoreau
I allowed myself a microscopic view into his ice-colored eyes. It was like viewing one of those photographs of the Arctic region – very foreign, exotic, clearly a place you’ve never dreamed of going.
Vicki Covington
Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America’s flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eager to accept integration, feminism, homosexuality, juvenile delinquency, and the drug culture– or to shoulder the blame for the existence of these problems– but they were certainly willing to read about them.
Michael Korda
We need to eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, religion, and nationality. Every human requires food and water to survive and every human has a heart that bleeds, loves, and grieves.
Suzy Kassem
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.
Stephen King
Not all powers are spectacular." Hestia looked at me. "Sometimes the hardest power to master is the power of yielding.
Rick Riordan
Have you ever noticed,” he said, stirred now by this vision of domestic bliss that was beyond his reach, and shocked earlier that evening to find himself crying in the subway on his way home from a client, “that gay people secrete everything in each other’s presence but tears?
Andrew Holleran
Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.
Ray Bradbury
A strong woman strengthens women. An empowered woman empowers women. When one woman rises we are all elevated.
Toni Sorenson
Sometimes, the simple things are more fun and meaningful than all the banquets in the world ...
E.A. Bucchianeri
But no, music lasted longer than anything it inspired. After LPs, cassettes, and CDs, when matrimony was about to decay into its component elements—alimony and acrimony—the songs startled him and regained all their previous, pre-Rachel meanings, as if they had not only conjured her but then dismissed her, as if she had been entirely their illusion. He listened to the old songs again, years later on that same dark promenade, when every CD he had ever owned sat nestled in that greatest of all human inventions, the iPod, dialed up and yielding to his fingertip’s tap. The songs now offered him, in exchange for all he had lost, the sensation that there was something still to long for, still, something still approaching, and all that had gone before was merely prologue to an unimaginably profound love yet to seize him. If there was any difference now, it was only that his hunger for music had become more urgent, less a daily pleasure than a daily craving.
Arthur Phillips
You can’t blame yourself for what Socrates did. Those birds came because he wanted them to come, at least a part of him did. The pissed off part. Let that roll around in your brain for a while.”Jamie considered this. “No, Eddie. The hurt part, that’s what did it.”The crow shrieked again. It seemed louder, and that meant it was closer. Or maybe it was another crow, maybe several. Jamie and Eddie looked toward the sky, listening to the screams. Jamie spoke first.“We can’t let it happen again. We may be the only ones who know the truth about what Socrates can do.” “That thought probably has occurred to Socrates too.
Kenneth C. Goldman
When the Wolf King carries the hammer, thus are the final days known. When the fox marries the raven, and the trumpets of battle are blown.
Robert Jordan
[Public] libraries should be open to all—except the c
John F Kennedy
Walking next to Talent, she felt the singular, cozy comfort that steals upon one who is with a good friend.
Kristen Callihan
From the ruins, lonely and inexplicable as the sphinx, rose the Empire State Building. And just as it had been tradition of mine to climb to the Plaza roof to take leave of the beautiful city extending as far as the eyes could see, so now I went to the roof of that last and most magnificent of towers.Then I understood. Everything was explained. I had discovered the crowning error of the city. Its Pandora's box.Full of vaunting pride, the New Yorker had climbed here, and seen with dismay what he had never suspected. That the city was not the endless sucession of canyons that he had supposed, but that it had limits, fading out into the country on all sides into an expanse of green and blue. That alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining ediface that he had reared in his mind came crashing down.That was the gift of Alfred Smith to the citizens of New York.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Because love was not the answer to every question. Because real love meant sacrifice. Sometimes love means letting go.
Melissa de la Cruz
I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.
Raymond Carver
There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.
Thomas Paine
Life is an adventurous ride in a train we call time.
Debasish Mridha
My mother used to tell me to be a leader, never a follower. As a respect to my the words of my mother, I cannot place my faith in God or anyone else, because if I do, I am merely a follower. In order to respect my mother's wishes, I had to dethrone God himself and claim the title as leader.
Lionel Suggs
In the summer, we write life’s summary with the slow waves of love flowing over the sandy beach. The slow breeze and the warm sun write our memories.
Debasish Mridha
I can't think I had much of a sense of humor as long as I remained the only child. When my brother Edward came along we both became comics, making each other laugh.
Eudora Welty
In water so fine, a few minutes of bad memory all but disappear downstream, washed away by ten thousand belly busters, a million cannonballs. Paradise was never heaven-high when I was a boy but waist-deep, an oasis of cutoff blue jeans and raggedy Converse sneakers, sweating bottles of Nehi Grape and Orange Crush, and this stream. I remember the antidote of icy water against my blistered skin, and the taste of mushy tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, unwrapped from twice-used aluminum foil. I saw my first water moccasin here, and my first real girl, and being a child of the foot washers I have sometimes wondered if this was my Eden, and my serpent. If it was, I didn't hold out any longer than that first poor fool did.
Rick Bragg
People have been driving off of the canyon for decades. I don't know of any that were accidental. One Ranger who worked here before I did told me that on several occasions, when cars drove off and folks died, they went down and collected the remains. But there were no helicopters strong enough and affordable enough to haul the cars out. He told me Rangers went down later and sprayed the cars with paint to help them blend in with the rocks.
Nancy Eileen Muleady-Mecham
Dearest love, let me count the ways. Dismemberment, garroted, poisoned, drowned, named. I read that as soon as a species is named it begins its travels up the endangered list. Discovery meaning death.
Lindsay Hunter
The show must go on, and so must The Book.
E.A. Bucchianeri
John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you’re a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, ready to cut. Penis in the scissors. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This doesn’t belong here. So I’m going to cut it off.' I said, 'You can’t do that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Because if you ever want to have girl parts, they need that to make them.' I pulled that one right out of my ass. He handed me the scissors and said, 'Okay.
Andrew Solomon
I Don't Waste My Time Doing Crosswords, As My Life Is The Only Puzzle I Care To Resolve!
Latif Mercado
When God speaks to us, He should have our full attention.
Billy Graham
The longer I think about a food industry organized around an animal that cannot reproduce itself without technical assistance, the more I mistrust it. Poultry, a significant part of the modern diet, is emblematic of the whole dirty deal. Having no self-sustaining bloodlines to back up the industry is like having no gold standard to underpin paper currency. Maintaining a natural breeding poultry flock is a rebellion, at the most basic level, against the wholly artificial nature of how foods are produced.
Barbara Kingsolver
As I worship, my perspective shifts. I focus on His attributes: His goodness, His power, His name, and His mercy. Crises that once overwhelmed me become insignificant in comparison to God’s vast power and all-encompassing love for me as His child.
Katherine J Walden
UnsightlyIf I strip my heart naked, you'll see all the unsightly scars, I'm afraid.
John Mark Green
I kiss him. My mouth on his. Without fear. Without thought. All of my emotions, my love, my trust, wrapped up in this embrace.
Katie McGarry
Christmas, my child, is love in action.
Dale Evans Rogers
Ben shook his head.Sitting down he asked, “So, you are Marty, right?”He got an incredulous look in response along with a cautious, “Yeah.”“You look way different dressed like that and without any make up on and stuff. Like a pretty guy almost, no offense.”Marty widened her eyes incredulously. “Umm...I have a confession here I obviously need to make. We're in public, so don't you dare punch me, or try to jump me later. I got witnesses who'll be able to verify I was here with you and that you threatened me.”Ben's brows furrowed. “What? Why would I do that?”“Hello, my name is Marty.” Marty extended her hand across the table. “I'm a guy.
Leona Windwalker
Can you imagine a scenario, given our present circumstances, in which human life will actually survive and be here in a thousand years?
Daniel J. Rice
Even if through simple living and rigorous recycling you stopped your own average Americans annual one ton of garbage production, your per capita share of the industrial waste produced in the US is still almost twenty-six tons. That's thirty-seven times as much waste as you were able to save by eliminating a full 100 percent of your personal waste. Industrialism itself is what has to stop.
Derrick Jensen
Love is letting go of fear.
Gerald Jampolsky
I’d rather know how you feel than hope and wonder and delude myself for weeks on end…
Dan Wells
There are times when the evil seems so impenetrable, the wickedness so victorious, you don't even know how to hope. But then the good news bursts in, as impossible to deny as it is to believe.
Heather Day Gilbert
All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.
Jodi Picoult
We need a moderately-priced stock market… The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves. But, unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do. For the investor, a too-high purchase price for the stock of an excellent company can undo the effects of a subsequent decade of favorable business developments.
Warren Buffett
The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me."Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!""You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him.
Nicholas Kaufmann
I will gladly accept any and all books, however. A person can never have too much reading material. Especially on a fall or winter evening. If you’re feeling extra generous, you may include tea. I love a unique blend.
Kerri Maniscalco
Safety was one thing, but what he really wanted was to be electrified, to be wounded, to be cast into the wilderness, to be released, to be exalted, and most especially to be surrounded by the drowning noise and ebullience and casual presence of friends calling out his name, demanding his presence.
Carol Shields
A law is not good merely because the legislature wills it, but the legislature has the mortal duty to will only that which is good.
John Howard Griffin
Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.
Brennan Manning
A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
But, really, are there any guys out there who aren’t jerks? I don’t even know any grown-up men who aren’t jerks.
Margaret Peterson Haddix
... I have just experienced the most passionate kiss I've ever received from a guy, and it was on the freaking forehead!
Colleen Hoover
Taking a thing apart is always faster than putting something together. This is true of everything except marriage.
Joe Hill
All too soon the garden of childhood is paved cold with the asphalt roads of adulthood. And while it is not within her power to halt this unrelenting progression, a mother can diligently guard this most precious garden and insure that the roads become gentle paths that wind through it instead of byways that kill it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough