Quotes by American Authors - Page 1605

The morning after my mother’s death, I was surprised to see the sunrise. From behind the curtain of my bedroom window I was surprised to see the people leave their homes and begin the day. Downstairs, the hands of the grandfather clock continued to tick, marking each passing hour with a chime that echoed over the black and white chessboard tiles of the front hall. I was surprised to see the mail come at the same time as the day before and, later that evening, the sun set once more as it did since the beginning of time. My mother’s death did not disturb the planets in their courses. And, though everything kept moving like she never existed at all, my world erupted into chaos until the universe swirled around me like a whirlpool of scattering stars.
James Campion Conway
Nico di Angelo ran up to me with a big grin on his face."Percy, this is awesome!" His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big. I wondered if there was any way I'd looked that ridiculous when I'd first arrived.
Rick Riordan
As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.
Robert Fulghum
A werewolf.” He said the word like he was learning a foreign language and wanted to get the accent right.
Tielle St. Clare
The universe is eternal; every person appears in the stream of time, and then disappears. The ego does not survive. Life is significant despite that it ends. The products of human life that we cherish – love, happiness, beauty, art, kindness, – have value without being everlasting. We must conquer human fearfulness in order to live a dignified life.
Kilroy J. Oldster
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Poets are simply those who have made a profession ans a lifestyle of being in touch with their bliss.
Joseph Campbell
Last night I missed two free throws which would have won the game against the best team in the state. The farm town high school I play for is nicknamed the "Indians," and I'm probably the only actual Indian ever to play for a team with such a mascot.This morning I pick up the sports page and read the headline: INDIANS LOSE AGAIN.Go ahead and tell me none of this is supposed to hurt me very much.
Sherman Alexie
The solution to encourage creativity is to maximize use of employees’ brainpower.
Pearl Zhu
Whatever beliefs and definitions you hold will seem to be true.
Thomas Daniel Nehrer
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
Lenny Bruce
It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write.
Steven Pressfield
Do not focus too much on the east and forget the west. And do not ignore the south, to speak for the north. What happens in the east has effects in the north, as the west has in the south. And do not focus on one species and ignore the other. Or love your father but ignore your mother, or love your sister but ignore your brother. Do not forget each other. We are all part of each other. We are all one.
Suzy Kassem
You always feel like you are the only one in the world, like everyone else is crazy for each other, but it's not true. Generally, people don't like each other very much. And that goes for friends, too.
Miranda July
Close your eyes and picture it. Can you see it?"I nod, eyes closed. its texture, shape, and color—got it?"I smile, holding the image in my head. its contours with the tips of your fingers, cradle its weight in the palms of your hands, then combine all of your senses—sight, touch, smell, taste—can you taste it?"I bite my lip and suppress a giggle. it!" he says.So I do. I do all of those things. And when he groans, I open my eyes to see for myself.. This isn't even close.""Nope, nothing fruity about him." I laugh, smiling ateach of my Damens—the replica I manifested before me, and the flesh and blood version beside me. Both of them equally tall, dark, and so devastatingly handsome they hardly seem real.
Alyson Noel
The forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.
F. D. Roosevelt
Well, spit on my empty grave--if it ain't the attack of the Disney princesses!
Amy Plum
It is in the last step that one finds the unfathomable beginning; it is in the aloneness that one discovers himself never alone; it is in the deep silence that one hears the hidden music—the chant of eternity, the illuminated whisper of love.
Heather K. O'Hara
Cricket is baseball on Valium.
Robin Williams
You find peace by becoming a source of peace for others.
Debasish Mridha
When I come back to you, if I come back to you, will I know you? Will you be the city of my memory? Or will you be a stranger?
Robert Jackson Bennett
But what are they?” Annie asked.“An omphalos, probably,” said Jacob.“A what, dear?” Melinda asked.“A bellybutton of the world.”“I didn’t know it had one.
Caleb Crain
No more fear of hunger. A new kind of freedom. But what then ... what? What would my life be like on a daily basis? Most of it has been consumed with the acquisition of food. Take that away and I'm not really sure who I am, what my identity is. The idea scares me some.
Suzanne Collins
He had never actually said what he hunted, only that he enjoyed it.
Kayla Krantz
The highways of American cities are an enduring testimony to our acceptance of ugliness
J. Rufus Fears
Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.
Ursula K Le Guin
Women don't want all that. Women just want a partner who is considerate and attentive, who will spoon with them while reciting Keats, and feed them organic yogurt by candlelight on a seaside cliff at sunset.
Stephen Colbert
The words ‘drink me’ come to mind. Anyone besides me up for some heavy alcohol consumption?
Elle Lothlorien
I will keep writing about these intersections as a writer and a teacher, as a black woman, as a bad feminist, until I no longer feel like what I want is impossible. I no longer want to believe that these problems are too complex for us to make sense of them.
Roxane Gay
Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.
Alice Sebold
A dream conceived from the inside-out eventually becomes reality. But a dream desired from the outside-in is subject to spoil and tragedy.
T.F. Hodge
The music filled the room, making the windows shake. I'd forgotten how much I loved to dance. It didn't take long before I was letting go of Princess Catherine and dancing like Cathy-and it felt good. Free and fun. I bumped butts with Patricia, wrapped a boa around Chadwick, and laughed as Daniel did the YMCA.
Nichole Chase
It’s so hard not to be fascinated by the broken, to remember that a boy with a sad smile and a pretty face is not the boy that you should fall in love with.
Kris Kidd
How will machines know what we value if we don't know ourselves?
John C. Havens
Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.
George R.R. Martin
Go for broke, my friends. Straighten your spine when you step to the podium. Trust your own tongue. Believe that your weary legs will hold you until you reach the finish line. And reach it you will if you give it your all. Fall if you must, crawl if you must, but don’t you dare give up or give in until you’ve made it to the end. For at the end is where your great reward will be to begin anew. A new chance. A new life. A new you.
Toni Sorenson
When you are searching for knowledge, knowledge is also searching for you.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
You can't stop time. You can't capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.
Kim Edwards
The painter does not conceive himself as existing in himself, he conceives himself as a reflection of the objects he has put into his pictures and he lives in the reflections of his pictures, a writer, a serious writer, conceives himself as existing by and in himself, he does not at all live in the reflection of his books, to write he must first of all exist in himself, but for a painter to be able to paint, the painting must first of all be done.
Gertrude Stein
We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system.
Noah Levine
There is sitting and there is sitting. (...) Each one waits for the other to move, but the lion is poised, his tail twitching, while the fawn is frozen by fear, bowels turned to belly. No matter which way he bounds, the lion will have him, and he knows it.
George R.R. Martin
Honey, I have a feeling he doesn’t think of you as a friend. Have you seen the way he looks at you?”She glanced at him and as if he could feel her gaze, he turned his eyes on her. Soft and hard all at once. “Yeah,” Mel said. “He promised to stop doing that.
Robyn Carr
Can you imagine what it would be like to look into somebody's eyes and know that their destiny is so much greater than yours, that you will never compete? You will always be left behind.
Lois Lane
In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value. The numb misery of the horse was matched by that of the farmer; the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal's fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence's own life would soon be, in a wink of earth's tremendous time. Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sherry horrible and disgusting. All fleshy acts became vile, rather than merely some. The reality of men slaying lambs and cattle, fish and fowl to sustain their own bodies took on an aspect of grisly comedy--the blood-soaked selfishness of a cosmic mayhem.
John Updike
The only power God recognizes in His church is the power of His Spirit whereas the only power actually recognized today by the majority of evangelicals is the power of man.
A.W. Tozer
That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.
Chuck Palahniuk
She didn’t brighten the whole room for me when she walked in the door. She didn’t make my whole day better just by smiling at me, or make me ask myself what she would think of me when I said or did something shitty to somebody. She wasn’t the one who made me want to get off my ass and do more, be a better person. Only you’ve ever done that, sunshine.
Cherrie Lynn
I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.[On first words spoken on a phonograph.]
Thomas A. Edison
He wanted to impart some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you dont' become a runner by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand?
John L. Parker Jr.
Let us not project our own spiritual limitations onto the modern world, for it is not the world which prevents us from being religious. The kind of world we live in shapes the manner and mode of our religiousness
Harvey Cox
They're dead. We're alive. We have things to do.
Lauren DeStefano
If your boss asks you to do a task... You'll stay late for work to make sure it's done. You'll be confident that your boss wouldn't have asked you if he/she didn't trust that you could do it. You wouldn't allow anyone or anything to distract you. No matter how hard it is, it's not an option, you'll find a way to make it happen. You'll not only find time, you'll try to get it done before the deadline. So, why when God gives you a task... you allow fear to consume you, find excuses, allow distractions, care about what people think and assume it's impossible? If He gave it to you, He trusts you CAN get it done. Yes, they'll be distractions. And no it's not going to be easy, but know that it is POSSIBLE!!! Answer the call!
Yvonne Pierre
And everything soon must change. Men would set their watches by other suns than this. Or time would vanish. We would need no personal names of the old sort in the sidereal future, nothing being fixed. We would be designated by other nouns. Days and nights would belong to the museums. The earth a memorial park, a merry-go-round cemetery. The seas powdering our bones like quartz, making sand, grinding our peace for us by the aeon. Well, that would be good - a melancholy good.
Saul Bellow
There were so many other people in my life.I had spent all of my time listening,learning the longings we all have in common.I never took the time to hear them in myselfand I heard them speaking to him.The desire for desire, that hopefor hope, the possibility of everythingtruly possible. I had so many friends,so many nods and conversations,so many things I’d always wantedto say to someone.
David Levithan
Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.
Eudora Welty
So while the world thinks of you as a real-life Bruce Wayne with hundreds of millions in the bank and models draped across your arm, you’re really Batman, aligned with the Resistance, and you kidnapped me for your own good?”“Exactly,” he said.“Isn’t that what an assassin would say in such circumstances?” She batted her eyelashes.
Avery Flynn
Sow a thought and reap an action, sow an action and reap a habit, sow a habit and reap a destiny - John Cleaver
Dan Wells
It’s been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.
John Hodgman
When a character comes to life, it’s like meeting a new friend for the first time.
Lynette Mather
Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?
Ronald J. Sider