Quotes by American Authors - Page 1582

One word absent from a sentence, or misinterpreted incorrectly, can change the entire meaning of a sentence. One word can change the meaning of everything. Before you believe anything about God or anybody, ask yourself how well do you trust the transmitter, translator or interpreter. And if you have never met them, then how do you know if the knowledge you acquired is even right? One hundred and twenty-five years following every major event in history, all remaining witnesses will have died. How well do you trust the man who has stored his version of a story? And how can you put that much faith into someone you don't know?
Suzy Kassem
Maddy pressed her fingers to her lips, a smile blooming there. The man could kiss like the devil. Hot, passionate, demanding. Holy hell. Ronan McGuire was a force of nature, and equally dangerous.
Sara Humphreys
A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
You're the Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation - a foundation that says it wants to disseminate scientific information to the community regarding this syndrome but you can't, or won't, give me its signs and symptoms. That is confusing to me. I don't understand why there isn't a list."A Conversation With Pamela Freyd, Ph.D. Co-Founder And Executive Director, False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc., Part I, Treating Abuse Today, Vol. III, No. 3.
David L. Calof
Somebody should have taken him to a stationary store and pointed out the difference between an envelope and a whore.
Richard Brautigan
According to Wallace, the expectation that art amuses is a 'poisonous lesson for a would-be artist to grow up with,' since it places all of the power with the audience, sometimes breeding resentment on the part of the author. 'I can see it in myself and in other young writers,' he told McCaffery: 'this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.' Wallace expressed his 'hostility' by writing unwieldy sentences, refusing to fulfill readers' expectations, and 'bludgeoning the reader with data'--all strategies he used to wrestle back some of the power held by modern audiences.
Dorothy M. Kennedy
You may be surprised and encouraged to learn that while inability to deal with fear may look and feel like a psychological problem, in most cases it isn’t. I believe it is primarily an educational problem, and that by reeducating the mind, you can accept fear as simply a fact of life rather than a barrier to success.
Susan Jeffers
Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably out to be. His chief occupation is the extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
Ambrose Bierce
The reason they outperformed her was that they accepted each new “product” without trying to understand it. They got behind the new pitch wholeheartedly, even when it was risible and/or made no sense, and then, if a prospective customer had trouble understanding the “product,” they didn’t vocally agree that it sure was difficult to understand, didn’t make a good-faith effort to explain the complicated reasoning behind it, but simply kept hammering on the written pitch. And clearly this was the path to success, and it was all a double disillusionment to Pip, who not only felt actively punished for using her brain but was presented every month with fresh evidence that Bay Area consumers on average responded better to a rote and semi-nonsensical pitch than to a well-meaning saleswoman trying to help them understand the offer.
Jonathan Franzen
Now you also know what it is to be wanted and loved.
Julianne Donaldson
But instead of the end, I’m pretty sure I found myself at the start of something.
Daniel H. Wilson
Pleasure, ecstasy, they cannot seem to bear: their escape from it is in violence, in drinking and fighting and apparently inescapable----And so why should not their religion drive them to crucifixion of themselves and one another? he thinks.
William Faulkner
The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.
Chuck Palahniuk
How starved you must have been that my heart became a meal for your ego.
Amanda Torroni
Sometimes what we lack is the thrill of anticipation or the delay of gratification. We enjoy things far more when we've really desired them but had to wait for them. The real value is found in our self control and patience, which allows us to delay gratification and build anticipation. Letting desire build is an abstract way to achieve balance and moderation in your life... Moderation just may be the answer to boredom - go figure! -- pg 145-146
Cristin Frank
The brain is both an emitter and a receiver of many forms of electromagnetic energy. There are fields of various forms around all living things, some we know about and others have yet to be documented.
Steven Magee
You are not a murderer. I find it difficult to think of that as a personality flaw.
Marissa Meyer
Ideas that don't even exist have the power to destroy the world.
Lionel Suggs
There is always time to die, but never time to live.
Anthony Liccione
It shouldn't be the consumer's responsibility to figure out what's cruel and what's kind, what's environmentally destructive and what's sustainable. Cruel and destructive food products should be illegal. We don't need the option of buying children's toys made with lead paint, or aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons, or medicines with unlabeled side effects. And we don't need the option of buying factory-farmed animals.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Church wasn't designed by an architect (Technically, Jesus was a carpenter.). So why do we think of churches as buildings instead of groups of people who love Jesus?
Dillon Burroughs
Sad.” She lets out a bitter laugh. “Life is full of sadness. It’s part of being a woman. Our lives are lived for the sake of others. Our happiness is never factored in. Do I want this life? Living here and seeing my husband a few times a year, raising my daughter alone? I don’t know what it was like for you in America, but this is how life is. This is reality. But this advice is coming too late. It’s meaningless now.
Aisha Saeed
You don't need another Human Being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters In your soul, but cracks to put their love into, Is the most calming thing In this World.
Emery Allen
When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, “God loves you.” To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, “You're Cathleen, aren't you?” “Yes,” I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, “She loved you so much.” I know.
Cathleen Falsani
Only one advantage still remained to Mandred, an edge that Vrrmik could never take from him. The soldiers who marched behind his banner were men and it was the hearts of men that beat within their breasts, hearts that could be moved to selflessness, could be stirred to valour and fired with courage. However numerous Vrrmik’s horde, they were skaven, they were cringing beasts driven by fear and greed, incapable of believing in anything more vital than their own skins. Terror and avarice were the forces that drove them on, but such things could only stretch so far, overcome only so much. Mandred’s troops could endure more than Vrrmik’s monsters. That was the one strength the skaven could never equal.
C.L. Werner
When a day goes by and I haven't written anything, I better have been doing something worth writing about.
P.S. Bartlett
It is painful to behold a man employing his talents to corrupt himself. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke than he is to her. He is not affected by the reality of distress touching his heart, but by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.
Thomas Paine
I haven't got anything against cats. I haven't got anything against elk either, but that doesn't mean I'm going to keep one in the store so I'll have a place to hang my hat.
Lawrence Block
The Poem That Took The Place Of A MountainThere it was, word for word, The poem that took the place of a mountain. He breathed its oxygen, Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table. It reminded him how he had needed A place to go to in his own direction How he had recomposed the pines, Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds For the outlook that would be right, Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion: The exact rock where his inexactness Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged Where he could lie and gazing down at the sea, Recognize his unique and solitary home.
Wallace Stevens
Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn’t like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn’t for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, “Sorry.” “Don’t be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.
C.E. Murphy
Because all the brilliant ones- they can sing it and they can paint it, but they can't do it. You can't expect them to love you.
Dakota Lane
I had a dream that I was perfect…I woke up and was still perfect. Aw.
Starley Ard
No matter what danger you might face," the wizard resumed, "within this book is a magical solution."I did as Ebenzum bade, opening to a page titled "EZ Wizard's Index." I scanned quickly down the righthand column:Demons, who are about to eat you, 206, 211Demons, who are about to tear you limb from limb, 207Demons, who are about thrash you soundly, 206-7Demons, who have already begun to eat you, 208"As you can see," my master continued, "quick reference to this index can prepare you for virtually any eventuality.
Craig Shaw Gardner
A Photographer is limited to some types of Photography. An Artist is able to do any types of photography. It's just a matter of choice and feelings.
Steeven Shaw
Ego is the ultimate killer on a team
Patrick Lencioni
My heart says, ‘This way.’ The world says, ‘That way.’ God says, ‘I am the Way.’ And if perchance I choose to listen to the first two, I’m going to find myself so far off the ‘way’ that being lost becomes the ‘way’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
His room was dark until he switched on his desk lamp. I sat on the floor next to his bed and watched him counting clothes and considering shoes. He seemed so boyish right then—like he wished his mom would just come in and pack for him. I couldn’t possibly love him any more than I did at that moment.
Laura Anderson Kurk
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought and not as many of those who worry about their shortcomings believe an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
Emily Post
It is in the quiet that you gain perspective when you have to deal with the loud.
Todd Stocker
Dream, believe, strive, achieve.
Debasish Mridha
What good were fate and fortune anyway? If there was some sort of plan she was supposed to follow, it was unreadable to her and impossible to stick to. She was tired of fate, which was probably just a made-up concept invented by humans to feel like something or someone was guiding them anyway. God, spirits, cookies, whatever. She was so sick of buying into the idea that there was actually meaning behind any of this. It was just her, blind and alone, making a mess of her life on her own, thank you very much.
Andrea Lochen
Who you are; that is, who you choose to be — your identity, works in your life like an invisible hand.
Bryant McGill
Suddenly, I saw ocean again—then another horizon line—but this time the deep blue sky was on the wrong side of the line…the Holy crap, we’re upside down side.
M.A. George
I have lost tolerance for things without meaning. There is no time for them. Does that make sense? - Sara Seager
Lee Billings
If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.
George Steiner
Because I think you're right. You can make a difference." He told me experiences were kind of like fate, and fate usually came in the form of a test. He told me fate liked to be worshiped. It liked to see us fall on out knees before it offered to help us up..." ♥
Lauren Oliver
You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.
Jodi Picoult
A man can see by starlight, if he takes the time.
Michael Crichton
The author charted the importance of human examples on his spiritual journey, confessing that when harsh and domineering people based their bullying on Christ's authority, he rebelled. But when his wife represented the gracefulness of Christ's character, he was drawn back to know Christ more fully.
Don Wilton
It’s often said that cowards make the best torturers. Cowards have good imaginations, imaginations that torment them with all the worst stuff of nightmare, all the horrors that could befall them. This provides an excellent arsenal when it comes to inflicting misery on others. And their final qualification is that they understand the fears of their victim better than the victim does himself.
Mark Lawrence
After the first glass of vodkayou can accept just about anythingof life even your own mysteriousnessyou think it is nice that a boxof matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Swedenfor they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?
Frank O'Hara
Depression, is like trying to find a light switch in pitch darkness. Defeating it takes much assistance and resource. First, it's letting in loved ones that are reaching out, when light will begin to shine.
Anthony Liccione
For the record," I do not desire your body. Not that you're hideous or anything, far from it. Even with those scars, your chest is really nice, and I like your legs because they aren't scrawny, and you have nice shoulders and naughty bits, but I've never been one to put physical attributes ahead of more important things."t"Such as?" He had his hands on his hips when he asked the question, which just made me want to giggle again.t"Intelligence, a sense of humor, and oh yes, not being a mythical creature." I swallowed another giggle. "Not that it wasn't a cool form, but still. I like my men without the sort of baggage that must go with being a shape-shifter."t"Is that so?" One eyebrow lifted.t"Yes."t"Then you will not like this." He pulled me against him, his mouth moving into place on mine, his breath hotter than I could have imagined. And then he kissed the very wits right out of my brain.
Katie MacAlister
Writing is an exemplary means to make contact with the whole of the self. What ultimately makes up the self is a collation of personal knowledge derived from physical, mental, and emotional experiences. The only way to divine the self is to understand what comprises its constituent components. The self is what we do, think, and act. Writing is not merely a documenter of the actions of the self. Writing, similar to other artistic activities, is one of the fundamental activities that a self can perform.
Kilroy J. Oldster
his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively -- I wondered if he realized that the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.
Maggie Stiefvater
Bravery is listening even when you don't want to hear it.
Alaric Hutchinson
All creations are one with the universe. Look at the world around you. Can you effectively separate yourself from everything else? After seriously pondering this, most of us rapidly conclude that we cannot. To even make the statement that I exist as a unique entity requires comparison with something else. (If you exist as a distinct being, your distinctiveness is in comparison to other creations. No other creations, no individual you.)
H.E. Davey
A metallic money, the augmentation or diminution of the quantity of metal available for which is independent of deliberate human intervention, is becoming the modern monetary ideal. The significance of adherence to a metallic-money system lies in the freedom of the value of money from State influence that such a system guarantees.
Ludwig von Mises
No matter where you go or what you do to distract yourself, reality catches up with you eventually
Kody Keplinger
What you have to decide... is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it? Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody. So dont be afraid. Be alive.
Sarah Dessen