Quotes by American Authors - Page 1689

When you fill a void, isn't the void still there?
Marty Rubin
Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Rob Siltanen
A quiet mind allows the artist to tap into the wellspring of Divine Music within.
Kenny Werner
Dominion does not mean domination. We hold dominion over animals only because of our powerful and ubiquitous intellect. Not because we are morally superior. Not because we have a "right" to exploit those who cannot defend themselves. Let us use our brain to move toward compassion and away from cruelty, to feel empathy rather than cold indifference, to feel animals' pain in our hearts.
Marc Bekoff
In the beginning we start with roses. The king’s flower right? Only they wilt in less than a day, especially when exposed to the elements. But Carnations? Oh, what a beautiful flower. They come in every color. True, some are painted, but that doesn’t mean they are less beautiful, and they never wilt.
Ruth McLeod-Kearns
A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.
Mark Twain
We are in this together. None of us truly walk in isolation, even when we cannot sense the presence of another for miles upon miles. Even in the worst of our desolation. Even during our coldest 3am breakdown. Even when we shut out the world and spin in circles until we collapse. Even then the light still gets in. Even then the heart still opens and reaches, tendrils of hope curling and bending toward slivers of light. Upward, outward, in all directions – seeking light at all cost. One way or another, we all grow toward the light.
Jeanette LeBlanc
The innocent curiosity of children gives them astounding courage.
Plague Jack
The world's theologyThe world's theology is easy to define. It is the view . . . that human beings are basically good, that no one is really lost, that belief in Jesus Christ is not necessary for salvation."Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools." Romans 1:22
James Montgomery Boice
Contextual awareness represents a continuum of behaviors, which illustrates how and why groups of people unite or divide among cultures.
Susan C.Young
Success has made failures of many men.
Cindy Adams
I Still Have So Much I Wish to Accomplish in My Life, Before I Finally leave This Godforsaken Place -- For Good.
Chris Mentillo
My entire life, I've been fascinated with stories. To everyone else, it seemed like the story itself was enough. But I wanted to know why someone told the story in the first place. Had something happened? Or were they only wishing for something to happen?
Amber Lough
Execution is everything. Even if you start a business with the wrong idea or too many competitors, you can out-execute all the better ideas in the right market.
Robert Jordan
Losing something happens in a day. An end takes one day. We all seem to focus on that one day, on that ending, rather than on the beautiful story that was created before the end came. We are obsessed with endings, so much so, that we would rather not live at all, than live and then lose. So, we have two choices: to not create our stories because we know that one day they have endings, or, to build our stories and therefore to live, filling the many years with memories and moments! An end takes one day to happen, but life takes place in the moments and in the memories that we choose to feel, to build, to hold. Don't miss out on the years, for the fear of one day.
C. JoyBell C.
We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—”“Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?”“Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.”“Nobody does,” I assure him.
David Levithan
Trying to make the presidency work these days is like trying to sew buttons on a custard pie.
James David Barber
Reason is overrated. Many pundits have argued that a good heart and steadfast moral clarity are superior to triangulations of overeducated policy wonks, like the best and brightest and that dragged us into the quagmire of Vietnam. And wasn't it reason that gave us the means to despoil the planet and threaten our species with weapons of mass destruction? In this way of thinking, it's character and conscience, not cold-hearted calculation, that will save us. Besides, a human being is not a brain on a stick. My fellow psychologists have shown that we're led by our bodies and our emotions and use our puny powers of reason merely to rationalize our gut feelings after the fact
Steven Pinker
That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
Andrew laughed at the use of the word “theater.” “B.Atlman will have plenty of theater on Monday,” he said, “when Estée Lauder arrives to secure a prime location in the new cosmetic department. I was told on Friday that she intends to bring along her husband, Joseph, as well as her sons, Leonard and Ronald, to make sure she gets exactly what she wants.”tNina laughed loudly. “Oh, she’ll get what she wants all right. She’s a determined woman.” She glanced sideways at Dana. “And we know what a determined woman can accomplish, don’t we?”t“Yes, we do,” Dana replied. In Nina’s presence, the restrictions imposed by Bea and Helen seemed almost trivial. Dana had experienced a single setback, but Nina was a reminder of what real determination and enthusiasm could accomplish.t“Her reputation precedes her,” Andrew said. “Ira already told me to give Ms. Lauder whatever she wants.”t“Sounds like a done deal,” Dana said.t“That’s why there’s going to be a little drama on Monday,” Andrew said, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “The space she wants has already been promised to Charles of the Ritz.
Lynn Steward
Fear not! In life, problems are there to make you stronger.
Debasish Mridha
The panther that has stalked yousince you were a childis old now. No longer wild,and tired of guarding the treasureyou yourself left behind - blind and deaf, she will give it all to youif you just let her go.
Pat Schneider
We can best help children learn, not by deciding what we think they should learn and thinking of ingenious ways to teach it to them, but by making the world, as far as we can, accessible to them, paying serious attention to what they do, answering their questions -- if they have any -- and helping them explore the things they are most interested in.
John Holt
Life is not easy. We all have problems-even tragedies-to deal with, and luck has nothing to do with it. Bad luck is only the superstitious excuse for those who don't have the wit to deal with the problems of life.
Joan Lowery Nixon
By inspiring and healing others, you inspire and heal yourself.
Melanie Greenberg
Worldly religion is that which replaces Faith with mere wishful thinking. One must not make the common mistake of putting his faith in all the things he thinks God ought to bless him with; he should instead keep his faith planted in God Himself. Present to Him his needs and wants like a child to his Father, but have faith only in His wisdom and goodness like a servant to his King. God must always be one's Everything before He is one's token to everything.
Criss Jami
Just remember that those who feel profoundly depressed are those whose happiness is likewise intense. What's so wrong with that?
Ashly Lorenzana
For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.
Gayle Forman
In a stress pressure-cooker like America, I believe we will see more and more shooting massacres. Violence is in our cultural DNA.
Bryant McGill
A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
Arthur Brisbane
Many have referred to [Lewis] Carroll's rhymes as nonsense, but in my childhood world — Los Angeles in the '50s — they made perfect sense.
Wanda Coleman
But here in my hometown, history was like a fine dust that settled out on everything. There was nothing to counter it. The culture had been hardened by a religion suspect of joy, yet fascinated by sin. Its moral acceptance of slavery eroded compassion. And gentility became a necessary pretense to cover the resentment created long ago when the North’s industrial prestige trumped the agrarian South. It was not an easy place to feel lighthearted or triumphant. Nor was it an easy place to remember the beauty of wonder and awe.
Christina Carson
I feel that the change, the mutation in consciousness, will occur spontaneously once certain pressures now in operation are removed. I feel that the principal instrument of monopoly and control that prevents expansion of consciousness is the word lines controlling thought, feeling and apparent sensory impressions of the human host.
William S Burroughs
Although unanswered prayer is indeed a theme of the book, it is not the heart of the book, for unanswered prayer describes a problem but offers no solutions.
Gerald L. Sittser
. . . mixing defensiveness with anger - a wonderful mix, by the way.
Liza Palmer
It's not that I am not moved by these things, that I don't them in my life. But lately, their power has diminished." - 140
Robin Romm
When you don't ask for advice, but get it anyway, it has more to do with the needs and wants of the giver than you the receiver.
Charles F. Glassman
It is as though they simply cannot contemplate the notion of a short, slight man who dresses and moves like a popular (mis)conception of a homosexual being attractive to millions of women.
Dave Hill
One of the unsettling things about my journey, mentally, physically, and emotionally, was that I wasn’t sure when or where it was going to end. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I felt that I was starting over and over again. I was always on the move, always going somewhere. While we walked, I sometimes lagged behind, thinking about these things. To survive each passing day was my goal in life. At villages where we managed to find some happiness by being treated to food or fresh water, I knew that it was temporary and that we were only passing through. So I couldn’t bring myself to be completely happy. It was much easier to be sad than to go back and forth between emotions, and this gave me the determination I needed to keep moving. I was never disappointed, since I always expected the worst to happen. There were nights when I couldn’t sleep but stared into the darkest night until my eyes could see clearly through it. I thought about where my family was and whether they were alive.
Ishmael Beah
People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash
It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of our lives is bound up with waste and opacity... How can so much time hold so little, how can it be taken from us? Months, weeks, days, hours misplaced – and the most precious time of life, too, when our bodies are at their greatest strength, and open, as they never will be again, to the onslaught of sensation.
Carol Shields
There is a point where, as a writer, you grow to hate your characters, their stupid motivations, and their whiny inner dialogues. The only solution I have found to deal with that is to kill the character, resurrect him, then kill him again.
Caris O'Malley
Venice was a contrast from Los Angeles itself, where you might see a woman with $15,000 tits, a face frozen in place by Botox, wobbling with her $4,000 Gucci bag right past a child with a sunken belly and exposed ribs encaging a heart too weak to scream.
Jackie Haze
Long live the pioneersRebels and mutineersGo forth and have no fearCome close the end is near
X Ambassadors
I had to stop linking every single thing that happened to me with Kennedy. Realization dawned then, that he was still my default. Over the past three years, we’d become each other’s habit. And though he’d broken his habit of me when he walked away, I’d not broken my habit of him. I was still tethering him to my present, to my future. The truth was, he now belonged only to my past, and it was time I began to accept it, as much as it hurt to do so.
Tammara Webber
Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.
W.H. Auden
Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define us.
Alyson Noel
Grocery shopping was intimidating...the aisles were filled with everything from jumbo to miniature travel-sized rations. Who could I call to ask, “Does the size even matter?” I dare not ask my ex-wife.
Tez Brooks
God never asked us to meet life's pressures and demands on our own terms or by relying upon our own strength. Nor did He demands that we win His favor by assembling an impressive portfolio of good deeds. Instead, He invites us to enter His rest.
Charles R. Swindoll
I can’t curse those who don't believe as I do. I can’t express hate or disdain for those who criticize what I hold dear. I can’t outshout, bully, or taunt them. I can’t exercise the liberty of free speech because I answer to a higher law.I answer to the Word of God.
Lori Hatcher
Percy pulled Annabeth close and kissed her... long enough for it to get really awkward for Piper, though she said nothing. She thought about the old rule of Aphrodite's cabin: that to be recognized as a daughter of the love goddess, you had to break someone's heart. Piper had long ago decided to change that rule. Percy and Annabeth were a perfect example of why. You should have to make someone's heart whole. That was a much better test.When Percy pulled away, Annabeth looked like a fish gasping for air.'The Rivalry end here,' Percy said. 'I love you, Wise Girl.
Rick Riordan
I felt torn Between living and dying Between sleeping and surviving.
Stacy Morris
ROSEMARY Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary— Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly— born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary— since the flight to Egypt, blooming differently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers—white originally— turned blue. The herb of memory, imitating the blue robe of Mary, is not too legendary to flower both as symbol and as pungency. Springing from stones beside the sea, the height of Christ when thirty-three— it feeds on dew and to the bee “hath a dumb language”; is in reality a kind of Christmas-tree.
Marianne Moore
But comes a time for a woman when she stops thinking of herself as a girl, as a person of possibilities. She starts looking at the plain facts of herself. Her body that’s become the body that she has and her habits becoming the habits that she’s written in stone. Her “haves” being the ones she’s got and maybe not getting anymore.
Breena Clarke
Other people's criticisms about what you are capable of, have nothing to do with you.
Julieanne O'Conner
We aren't human.""Yes. We. Are." His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.
N K Jemisin
But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.
Herman Melville
I dreamt of you last night,vivid and consuming andgone as I woke upfaded from memory before I had the chanceto collect and recollectEven in my dreams you are ephemeraland just outside of reach- Fleeting
Abby Rosmarin
Yup, believe it: I was born on March 28, yet my name is April.
Sarah Mlynowski
You just can't go back and expect your mind to be blown by the same thing every time. Life doesn't work that way.
Holly Nicole Hoxter