Quotes by American Authors - Page 1723

Be curious. Read widely. Try new things. What people call intelligence just boils down to curiosity.
Aaron Swartz
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
Simon Cameron
When my mother passed away several years ago—well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn’t ‘pass away.’ She died. Something about that verb, ‘to pass away’ always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.
Steve Allen
A good novel begins with a small question and ends with a bigger one.
Paula Fox
I call [fourth-wave feminism] fainting–couch feminism, a la the delicate Victorian ladies who retreated to an elegant chaise when overcome with emotion. As an equality feminist from the 1970s, I am dismayed by this new craze. Women are not children. We are not fragile little birds who can’t cope with jokes, works of art, or controversial speakers. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are an infantilizing setback for feminism—and for women.
Christina Hoff Sommers
In the white man's world, language, too -- and the way which the white man thinks of it--has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language -- for the Word itself -- as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word.
N. Scott Momaday
You can't make the world perfect, Daniel," Michelle said calmly while dusting dirt off her jeans with her delicate hand. "No. I can't," I agreed. "But I can sure help make it better.
Shannon A. Thompson
The distance between you and everyone is love.
Debasish Mridha
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
Ansel Adams
The political writer, then is the ultimate optimist, believing people are capable of change and using words as one way to try and penetrate the privatism of our lives.
Cherríe L. Moraga
I know that suffering is one place where He ministers to us the most. So to think that we've had our quota would be foolish. I am just longing for the day when all the pain stops.
Mary Beth Chapman
We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts.
Hunter S. Thompson
The right path and easy path are usually two different things, and when it’s time to choose, always choose the right path over the easy.
Deatri King-Bey
To uncover new knowledge, and to find the truth, one must dare venture into the unknown.
Theodore Volgoff
Silence? What can New York-noisy, roaring, rumbling, tumbling, bustling, story, turbulent New York-have to do with silence? Amid the universal clatter, the incessant din of business, the all swallowing vortex of the great money whirlpool-who has any, even distant, idea of the profound repose......of silence?
Walt Whitman
Since everyone around you agrees ever since there were people on earth that land is value, or labor is value, or learning is value, or title, degree, necklaces, murex shells, the ownership of slaves. Everyone knows bees sting and ghosts haunt and giving your robes away humiliates your rivals. That the enemies are barbarians. That wise men swim through the rock of the earth; that houses breed filth, airstrips attract airplanes, tornadoes punish, ancestors watch, and you can buy a shorter stay in purgatory. The black rock is holy, or the scroll; or the pangolin is holy, the quetzal is holy, this tree, water, rock, stone, cow, cross, or mountain--and it's all true. The Red Sox. Or nothing at all is holy, as everyone intelligent knows.
Annie Dillard
The best way to predict your future is to create it
Peter F Drucker
I also know a Were-Pomeranian named Phoebe Fluffenstuff that will gut someone with her samurai sword as casually as you would slice a pie
James R. Tuck
I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, "I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.
David Sedaris
A mystic doesn’t say “I believe.” They say “I know.” A true mystic will ironically speak with that self-confidence but at the same time with a kind of humility. So when you see that combination of calm self-confidence, certitude, and humility all at the same time you have the basis for mysticism in general.
Richard Rohr
Don’t pinch that guy’s ass. He’s a leprechaun.
Kathy Bryson
The most important lesson that we're supposed to be learning right now is how completely lost we are without God. If we don't learn this lesson, then our lives are going to have zero meaning. (Stronger: Forty Days of Metal and Spirituality)
Brian Welch
Can I be honest with you?" he asked."Aren't you always? And brutally so?""I never realized you were a woman."She choked on a laugh of surprise. "Excuse me?""Inside my head..." he pointed, just in case she didn't know what a head looked like. "Inside my memories? You were always a little girl, like Izzy. Just a girl, skipping around, getting into trouble, and mouthing off. I never noticed you'd turned into a woman."Though the comprehension of the way he viewed her stung like the burn on her hand, she gave his broad chest beneath that worn-out gray Marines T-shirt an understanding pat with her unburned hand. "I know. It happens to the best of us female types."His big hand came up and captured hers against his chest."Annie?""yeah?"His gaze slowly traveled over her face, down to her lips, then back to her eyes. "I'm noticing now.
Candis Terry
He thoroughly intended to do some major grovelling. Olympic-style begging, if necessary.
Christy Reece
Bitterness imprisons life love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life love empowers it. Bitterness sours life love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life love heals it. Bitterness blinds life love anoints its eyes.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Republicans know well that a change of rhetorical pace is necessary. But efforts by their leaders to damp down the bellicosity of newly elected Tea Party types is running into the fact that the Tea Partiers have only the high volume setting on their amplifiers, just like Palin. They're like a couple having a fight at a funeral; politely sotto voce, then suddenly bursting out fortissimo with their plaints and accusations.
Alexander Cockburn
She lay outside in the courtyard, staring up at the raindrops… feeling them hit her body… trying to guess where one would land next. The nuns called again, threatening that pneumonia might make an insufferably headstrong child a lot less curious about nature.
Dan Brown
Maybe it shouldn’t have come as such a surprise, but like a tooth extraction, there was a moment of intense pain and then a numbing sense of loss. I was officially unmarried.
Larry J. Dunlap
I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it.
Aspen Matis
No two people see things the same.
David Patneaude
My thoughts are really all I think about.
Peter Davis
All work is service. If you aren't serving in your work, you really aren't working.
Tim Hiller
If we’ve somehow become convinced that the script we followed ‘yesterday’ can’t be edited, it will be incredibly difficult to tell the difference between ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
And what lesson can we draw from Volantene history?”“If you want to conquer the world, you best have dragons.
George R.R. Martin
I fear that someday you will abandon the joys we share and find another not worthy of your charms.
Lois Greiman
I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in the atmosphere. Done well, novel-writing can combine lyricism with practicality in a way that makes one think of grand tapestries, both functional and beautiful. Fifty years from now, I imagine I’ll still be questing after just that right combination of words.
Lauren Willig
No art is harder to master than believing in yourself.
Marty Rubin
People who try to tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. . . . "It's the glass," says one man, "the sound in the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle." ... An old woman was selling little miserable sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of burning buildings made it like day. . . . And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in—a squeaky voice. "Lavender!" she said. "Buy Lavender for luck."The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike. The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new.
John Steinbeck
The radiation detoxification process exists in nature. It is called: Hibernation.
Steven Magee
For the most part, the evidence shows that individual Americans do not care a great deal about politics and are rather poorly informed, unstable in their views, and not much interested in participating in the political process. These findings have led some observers to assert that citizens are ill-equipped for the responsibility of self-governance and that public opinion (the will of the majority) should not be the ultimate determinant of what government does.
Edward S. Greenberg
Life is not a one and done sort of deal. You've got to work for what you want.Picasso created nearly 100 masterpieces in his lifetime. But what most people don't know is that he created a total of more then 50,000 works of art. .. Thats two pieces of art a day. Success is a numbers game. You are not going to win if you keep telling yourself to wait. The more often that you choose courage, the more likely you'll succeed.
Mel Robbins
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
Charles Bukowski
none of my art is based on how others think i should have done it.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Mathematical knowledge is unlike any other knowledge. While our perception of the physical world can always be distorted, our perception of mathematical truths can’t be. They are objective, persistent, necessary truths. A mathematical formula or theorem means the same thing to anyone anywhere – no matter what gender, religion, or skin color; it will mean the same thing to anyone a thousand years from now. And what’s also amazing is that we own all of them. No one can patent a mathematical formula, it’s ours to share. There is nothing in this world that is so deep and exquisite and yet so readily available to all. That such a reservoir of knowledge really exists is nearly unbelievable. It’s too precious to be given away to the “initiated few.” It belongs to all of us.
Edward Frenkel
You can never hurt anyone without hurting yourself.
Debasish Mridha
Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Most of us fear change. Even when our minds say change is normal, our stomachs quiver at the prospect. But for strategists and managers today, there is no choice but to change.
Robert Waterman
Learning isn't acquiring knowledge so much as it is trimming information that has already been acquired.
Criss Jami
I think a person who wants too much is asking to be disappointed.... I'd like to be good at just one thing.
Alyson Hagy
But all of the survivors had one thing in common, and that was love. They survived through love. Whether love of friend, love of country, love of God, or even love of enemy—love reveals to us the truly miraculous nature of the human spirit.
Ruta Sepetys
Lifting her lovely and longing face towards the inaudible chant of the sun, she drifted through her time, through space, through the concatenate cells of her unfolding self. Where to now, Abbzug? You're twenty-eight and a half years old, Abbzug. 
Edward Abbey
Please come out so I can see your face," Darcy said.tThere was a smile in Thorn's voice when he said, "I gave my jeans to Warrick. I'm no' shy, lass, but I doona want to embarrass Warrick.
Donna Grant
Who’d have thought your screwball brother could have gone so serial-killer fucktwat insane?
Larissa Ione
The vile are trampled beneath the feet of other pigs.
Bryant McGill
I believe in movement. I believe in that lighthearted balloon, the world. I believe in midnight and the hour of noon. But what else do I believe in? Sometimes everything. Sometimes nothing. It fluctuates like light flitting over a pond. I believe in life, which one day each of us shall lose. When we are young we think we won’t, that we are different. As a child I thought I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen.
Patti Smith
The telling and hearing of stories is a bonding ritual that breaks through illusions of separateness and activates a deep sense of our collective interdependence.
Annette Simmons
Rules are made to be broken." - Jared
Martha Sweeney
Is that what eternity is for, to muck over a lifetime's minutiae? Who could have imagined that one would have forever to remember each moment of life down to its tiniest component?
Philip Roth
We tend to overlook goodness, but we must put goodness front and center in our lives.
Toni Morrison
- Just that. Your family must be very different from mine.- I’d say so. - I laughed. - For one, no one wears their tiaras to breakfast.- Maxon smiled. - More of a dinner thing at the Singer house?”- “Of course.
Kiera Cass