Quotes by American Authors - Page 1611

She says, "Do you have any rubbers?" I say, I thought she was barren. "Sure, I'm sterile," she says, "but I've had unprotected sex with a million guys. I could have some terrible fatal disease." I say that would only be a problem if I wanted to live a lot longer. Fertility says, " That's how I feel about my giant credit card debt." So we have sex. If you could call it that.
Chuck Palahniuk
Afternoon experience: autographing exposed legs, outstretched in lines like matchsticks. Afternoon epiphany: Those with smooth, hairless legs would soon lose all evidence of my contact when the sweat causes the ink from the marker to run. I am ephemeral. Skepticism would be the reaction to those with thick leg hair, as their curls frazzle the lines of my name outward illegibly. Among the scaly-legged, I flaked off immediately, like I never was at all.
Benson Bruno
Ariel laughed and now her goose bumps had goose bumps.
Lisa Mantchev
I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.
W.H. Auden
Wenn jemand starb, dem du dein Herz geschenkt hattest, nahm er es dann mit?
Jodi Picoult
Don't criticize what you can't understand.
Bob Dylan
Feminism liberated women from the natural dignity of their sex and turned them into inferior men.
Francis Parker Yockey
When rain comes finally, washing away a low sky of muddy ocher, we who could not control the phenomenon are pressed into relief. The near-occult feeling: The face of being witness to the end of the world gives way to tangible things. Even if the succeeding sensations are not common, they are at least not mysterious.
Maya Angelou
Not many people understood the inherent pain of a career in heroics. Your body aches from the demands of day-to-day protection. Your mind whirs with the things you did wrong, the ways you could’ve done better, the scores of citizens you didn’t save. And when you lose someone you love, when their blood forms a puddle beneath your cheek while you watch… Your name, Watcher, becomes the cruelest agony of all.
Shirin Dubbin
That was the real secret of the Tarahumara: they'd never forgotten what it felt like to love running. They remembered that running was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation. Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first cave paintings, what were the first designs? A downward slash, lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running Man.Distance running was revered because it was indispensable; it was the way we survived and thrived and spread across the planet. You ran to eat and to avoid being eaten; you ran to find a mate and impress her, and with her you ran off to start a new life together. You had to love running, or you wouldn't live to love anything else. And like everyhing else we ove--everything we sentimentally call our 'passions' and 'desires' it's really an encoded ancestral necessity. We were born to run; we were born because we run. We're all Running People, as the Tarahumara have always known.
Christopher McDougall
God knows nothing gets accomplished in the world these days without terrorism.
Manil Suri
Like any value, empathy must be acted upon.
Barack Obama
I can't afford to say yes to all my staff's desires, but one thing is certain – I can't afford the outrageous cost of not listening to their requests.
John Yokoyama
Many people can and have written books, but many have nothing to say.
Amy Rogers
More than most, I know the pain of surviving.
Ann Aguirre
Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I lost my voice and my best friend tooOn swift, fierce winds and wings of blue, The cold rain fell where beams had shone, So I wrapped up tight and safe. Alone.But I missed my friend, I missed my voice, And my heart still whispered of another choiceTo break out of my binding, safe, and warm,And see what the world looked like after the storm.So I struggled free and was greeted byColorful brushstrokes across the sky,The melody of the summer breezeAnd blue wings like mine in hazel trees.On the soft, sweet air of the mountain glade,We gathered together in cool, green shade,And told our stories, beginnings to ends,And found our song in the hearts of new friends.
Elaine Vickers
The conversations of men had always been muddy rivers, the surface's roiling a reflection of what's buried, but the bottom some mysterious thing that would always be hidden.
David Joy
Going round and around inside a dryer can be fatal, whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.
Cassandra Clare
I think I miss Ben,” she told Lauren one night. “No, you don’t,” Lauren said. “But sometimes, I really think I do.” Lauren sighed. “Isabella, you miss the essence of a boy. That’s all.
Jennifer Close
Sharon looked at Aaron and smiled. She’d made the right decision, hadn’t she? Would she come to regret this decision too? She’d made so many mistakes in the past. Was this another one? No, self-doubt isn’t an option. Everything is going to work out here. It has to.
Tamara Hoffa
All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Trying to erase, hide, discredit, degrade, and suppress a writer's work, merit, voice, and influence―is unconstitutional. Censorship only exists to protect corruption.
Suzy Kassem
Why do you think there aren’t rules to how sex will work? You didn’t want to talk to me about what you wanted. You pushed me into the room so I wouldn’t turn on the light because you knew damn well I would push back on that, didn’t you?”She stayed where she was. “Yes. I don’t want you to see me. I don’t look like one of those girls in a magazine.”He groaned, the sound coming from deep in his chest. “Those girls in the magazines are airbrushed and way too thin. The camera adds pounds so those girls are so skinny I wouldn’t be able to fuck them for fear I would break them. I want a woman, Avery, not some tiny freaking thing whose waistline only proves she doesn’t eat. I want a woman who can take me. I want a woman I can hold on to. So bend over because I want to see your ass. I want to look at it because I’ve been dreaming about it for days. It’s hot and round and so fucking juicy I can’t stand it. Get me hot, Avery. Show me your ass.
Lexi Blake
We are not going to change the whole world, but we can change ourselves and feel free as birds. We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. Serenity is contagious. If we smile at someone, he or she will smile back. And a smile costs nothing. We should plague everyone with joy. If we are to die in a minute, why not die happily, laughing? (136-137)
Swami Satchidananda
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
When the owner of the pig arrived he found a scrawny and bloodcovered white boychild standing on what was left of his property sawing at it with a knife and hauling on the skin and cursing. The dirty half flayed pig looked like something recovered from a shallow grave.
Cormac McCarthy
Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight.
Terri Windling
Waking up begins with saying am and now. That which has awoken then lies for a while staring up at the ceiling and down into itself until it has recognized I, and therefrom deduced I am, I am now. Here comes next, and is at least negatively reassuring; because here, this morning, is where it has expected to find itself: what’s called at home.
Christopher Isherwood
A love of neighbor manifests itself in the tolerance not only of opinions of others but, what is more important, of the essence and uniqueness of others, when we subscribe to that religious philosophy of life that insists that God has made each man and woman an individual sacred personality endowed with a specific temperament, created with differing needs, hungers, dreams. This is a variegated, pluralistic world where no two stars are the same and every snowflake has its own distinctive pattern. God apparently did not want a regimented world of sameness. That is why creation is so manifold. So it is with us human beings. Some are born dynamic and restless; others placid and contemplative…One man’s temperament is full throated with laughter; another’s tinkles with the sad chimes of gentle melancholy. Our physiques are different, and that simple difference oftentimes drives us into conflicting fulfillment of our natures, to action or to thought, to passion or to denial, to conquest or to submission. There is here no fatalism of endowment. We can change and prune and shape the hedges of our being, but we must rebel against the sharp shears being wielded by other hands, cutting off the living branches of our spirits in order to make our personalities adornments for their dwellings.
Joshua Loth Liebman
For official record, if become bankrupt old retail distribution centers-labeled supermega, so-enlarged foodstuff market- later reincarnate to become worship shrine. First sell food-stuff, next then same structure sell battered furnitures, next now born as gymnasium club, next broker flea markets, only at final end of life...sell religions.
Chuck Palahniuk
Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle.
George L. Jackson
But my best friend from college was silent for a long time. She, of all of my friends, had seen the parade of sad wrecks through my life, date after bad date after bad boyfriend. She was the one who'd picked up the pieces after the musician, the investment banker, the humanitarian who was human to everyone but me.When at last she spoke, she said, Oh, hell.And, after that: Hallelujah.
Lauren Groff
Meg’s eyes were too bright. “I wish human beings couldn’t have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt.
Madeleine L'Engle
For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned—and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear.
Kiera Van Gelder
It’s not my fault that these are the problems I’ve been put on this earth to deal with, right? They’re petty, they piss me off, and they’re all mine
Megan McCafferty
And when all your faith is gone let it be me, if it's a friend you need let it be me
Ray Lamontagne
We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?""Perfect timing.
J D ROBB
I could have killed you,” I snarl.“You think you can become a god. You always meddle and change and create. No, that is not the way. What is shall always be. What is known shall always stand.”“Then you’ve never been in a laboratory!
Kate Rooper
I insist on caprice as a necessary countermeasure to slavery. Otherwise, my own dictatorial mind must take -- unknown to me -- its instructions from a mastermind.
Norman Lock
Not really hungry.""She’ll eat." Pritkin said curtly."I said —""If you starve to death it would damage my professional reputation.""I eat plenty.""The same does not apply should I strangle you in understandable irritation, however.""I’ll have a sandwich," I told Nick. "No meat.
Karen Chance
I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining any angers or gratitudes or anything, and I say, like 'Japhy Ryder, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha,' then I run on, say to 'David O. Selznick, equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha' though I don't use names like David O. Selznick, just people I know because when I say the words 'equally a coming Buddha' I want to be thinking of their eyes, like you take Morley, his blue eyes behind those glasses, when you think 'equally a coming Buddha' you think of those eyes and you really do suddenly see the true secret serenity and the truth of his coming Buddhahood. Then you think of your enemy's eyes.
Jack Kerouac
We give up our backs and allow religious myths to apply the rear naked choke to our minds.
Cameron Conaway
Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world.
Paul Auster
I once knew a man who was heir to the throne of a great kingdom, he lived as a ranger and fought his destiny to sit on a throne but in his blood he was a king. I also knew a man who was the king of a small kingdom, it was very small and his throne very humble but he and his people were all brave and worthy conquerors. And I knew a man who sat on a magnificent throne of a big and majestic kingdom, but he was not a king at all, he was only a cowardly steward. If you are the king of a great kingdom, you will always be the only king though you live in the bushes. If you are the king of a small kingdom, you can lead your people in worth and honor and together conquer anything. And if you are not a king, though you sit on the king’s throne and drape yourself in many fine robes of silk and velvet, you are still not the king and you will never be one.
C. JoyBell C.
At each step there is a small moment of transformation that cannot be overlooked or rushed. And these moments should not be, because they are beautiful.
Anne Ursu
Most try to fight the Truth of Time every day.
Dave Crenshaw
I am insane, does that surprise you? Ha! I think my mind is crumbling, just like crackers. If I had written five minutes earlier I would have wept, if I had written ten minutes earlier I would have told you to leave me alone, if I wait any longer I won’t write at all.
@ neuroticdream Tumblr
Walking through suffering is a work that is bound by limitation. Often it isn't that the afflicted are unwilling to let others in. It is just that there comes a certain point in a person's suffering where there is no apparent port of entry.
Russ Ramsey
At first the weight of loss was thrust upon me so harshly I could only take a short breath, just enough to endure the next few seconds, only to find I must inhale again. Every person in turmoil thinks the boulder on her chest will never lift. Yet the same boulder awakens an equally strong urge to live.
Thanhha Lai
Everyone’s alone—or so it seems to me.They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;They make faces, and think they understand each other,And I’m sure they don’t. Is that delusion?Can we only loveSomething created in our own imaginations?
T.S Eliot
If you can avoid a fight, do it. But if you can't, then find your opponent's most vulnerable spot and hit them here hard, fast, and often. The worst thing you can do is let a fight escalate. Shut it down as soon as you can. And remember, there is no such thing as fighting dirty. You either kick their ass, or have yours handed to you.
Kirker Butler
Perceptual fields are limited by the attractor patterns that they're associated with. This means that the capacity to recognize significant factors in a given situation is limited by the context that arises from the level of consciousness of the observer. The motive of the viewer automatically determines what is seen; causality is, therefore, ascribed to factors that are, in fact, a function of the biases of the observer and aren't at all instrumental in the situation itself.
David Hawkins
The boy was twelve, reveling in the strange dust-smelling murk of a New Orleans library, watching motes flash gold in a beam of sun. He loved the ceiling lights on chains and the table lamps with their green glass shades. The room was as beautiful as another world.
Marly Youmans
Illusory universality is the universality of the art of the culture industry, it is the universality of the homogeneous same, an art which no longer even promises happiness but only provides easy amusement as relief from labour.
J.M. Bernstein
To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit,l from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Research by the Income Center for Tradeshows found that people are twice as likely to remember you if you shake hands. According to the American Management Association, it takes only one-fortieth of a second to create a human bond. Whether you shake someone’s hand, squeeze their arm, or touch their shoulder, make these moments count to be remembered favorably.
Susan C.Young
As far as I'm concerned, the gator that ate T.C. deserves a medal from Crime Stoppers.
Carl Hiaasen
Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.
Mary Karr
The darkness does not flow from my being to them, but out of their hearts and into my skin. I don't inspire your evil. I never did. You offer it to me, from the gravest crime to the smallest indifference.
Phil Hester