Quotes by American Authors - Page 1732

I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.
Mary Karr
No one goes through this life unscathed. No matter what one sees in other people's lives that might seem better than one's own, that's only on the surface. No one knows what goes on beneath. Envy is an exercise in futility, since not one person gets out of this life alive.
Doug Meckelson and Diane Haithman
Time is a river...and books are boats. Many volumes start down that stream, only to be wrecked and lost beyond recall in its sands. Only a few, a very few, endure the testings of time and live to bless the ages following.
Joseph Fort Newton
Tony poured wine into each glass and handed one to Claire. “Do you remember when we had wine at the Red Wing?”Claire closed her eyes, recalling the scene from a lifetime ago, and nodded. “I do.”“I’d been watching you for years. I was so nervous that night. I thought I was planning your acquisition.” He looked into his red liquid. Her stance straightened, “If you’re using business metaphors, may I suggest hostile takeover. It’s more appropriate.
Aleatha Romig
So the nymphs they spoke,we kissed and laid.By noontime’s hourour love was made.Like braided chains of crocus stems,we lay entwined, I laid with them.Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,our bodies draping wearily,we slept, I slept so lucidly,with hopes to stay this memory.
Roman Payne
No matter how much you learn in college, it never prepares you for the real world.
Donald Allen
Nothing is generous. New knowledge is a valuable commodity. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we are.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Pleasure suffused her and she snuggled deeper into his arms, her heart clenching when he tightened his hold on her. After a while his breathing slowed and his hold relaxed. Convinced he slept, she whispered, "You should have been my first." A small ache pinched her heart.His chest vibrated beneath her hand, sending a thrilling shiver up her spine as his deep voice rumbled through the air, "I'll be your last.
Sophie Jordan
It's not the having of the gift that makes the difference in life here or in another place. It's how we use that gift that shows the true heart. ~ Acronis
Madison Thorne Grey
When you stopped to think about it, he reflected, there weren't many things in life one truly needed. To want too much was worse than greed: it was stupidity - a waste of precious time and effort.
Tad Williams
I expect to pass though this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to my fellow-creature let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it for I shall not pass this way again.
Stephen Grellet
Lost time is like a run in a stocking. It always gets worse.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
We can only come to terms with our own place in the world by compassionately commiserating with the pang of longing that our brethren experience.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Alaric, go after her. Since Daniel forced the blood bond on her, Quinn has been different. Lost. She deserves better than for you to abandon her and, priest or no, you know it.
Alyssa Day
He should probably make love to her.
Tara Janzen
Never underestimate the power of giving a book!
Carmela Dutra
Have concern about where you're from, where you live, and where you may travel. The village is global.
T.F. Hodge
Patience is the virtue that forges great men.
Chris Vincent
The idea of living forever makes me uncomfortable, and at this point I've lived long enough and seen enough Twilight Zone episodes to know that there's always a catch.
Mara Wilson
If you try to take our heart without earning our soul, our heart will break
Kristen Callihan
The ways of men and women are such a puzzle. And I could barely decipher my own feelings, let along anyone else's.
Megan Shepherd
What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They're made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner.
John Green
I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize I'm listening to it.
George Carlin
In its own unique and indefinable manner, music indirectly communicates the joys of life along with the pains and terrors overwhelming humanity. The universal language of music quantities the human experience, its range of variation encapsulates the scale of humankind’s exuberance for living as well as expresses our apprehension of suffering and death. Because music articulates the quintessence of life and yokes a myriad of human events into an expressible format, music is a critical act.
Kilroy J. Oldster
I often ask to what place I am running, for if I am unable to identify that place it is likely that I am running in a circle of the most circular sort.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The quail was tender, the potatoes smothered in butter, and the beans roasted in garlic.
Brian McClellan
Here, from her ashes you lay. A broken girl so lost in despondency that you know that even if she does find her way out of this labyrinth in hell, that she will never see, feel, taste, or touch life the same again.
Amanda Steele
The power itself comes from the fact that you can do something and people can’t see you do it and what kind of responsibility do you have when you can do it. What kind of good things can you do or can you do good things from being invisible in this way?
Trenton Lee Stewart
That's why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.
Tarryn Fisher
I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts.
Herman Melville
Home is anywhere that you know all your friends and all your enemies.
Orson Scott Card
I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION—side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages.
Katie Kacvinsky
He really is alone in whatever hell this is.Completely and utterly alone.'It isn't,' he thinks, as he trudges back toward his house, 'the most unfamiliar feeling in the world.
Patrick Ness
I hear he liked flowers pretty well.""Yes," said Annie, "he said they were the friends who always came back and never disappointed him."--"Out, Brief Candle
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
She raised her head and saw a squadron of fighter planes. She stretched her hand high as if she could grab hold and climb away from what she had done, from who she was.
Sarah Sundin
The hours tick by as I lie in bed.Memories keep surfacing, tormenting me into unbelievable sadness. I can't bring myself to move. I can't fight the memories that keep filling my thoughts. I stay curled in the fetal position as each memory plays out. I can't stop them from coming. I can't make them go away. Nothing can distract me. I can't block the memories, so they continue to come.
Ashley Earley
When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion.
Carl Sagan
If he was planning to attack and ravish, he gave no indication of being in a hurry to do so.
Julia Quinn
One day we wake from sleep to wander through this tale of dreams with wings fluttering lighter than love free.
Todd Crawshaw
When you appreciate anything or love anything, you attract it with the universal force of attraction.
Debasish Mridha
The true opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Hate bad as it is at least treats the neighbour as a thou whereas indifference turns the neighbour into an it a thing. This is why we may say that there is actually one thing worse than evil itself and that is indifference to evil. In human relations the nadir of morality the lowest point as far as Christian ethics is concerned is manifest in the phrase T couldn't care less.'
Joseph Fletcher
A Christian reveals true humility by showing the gentleness of Christ, by being always ready to help others, by speaking kind words and performing unselfish acts, which elevate and ennoble the most sacred message that has come to the world.
Ellen G. White
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people and greatly assists the circulation of their blood.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Memory, imagination, and passionately responding in accord with the deeply embedded impulse to act with decency are pliable mechanisms that we can employ to attain happiness.
Kilroy J. Oldster
He was painfully aware of the fact that he was in his underwear. Not the best situation in which to fight people.
Christian M. Frank
And then there was the expansive garden that ran the length of the rear of the house- lush with color and fragrances that seemed to burst from every branch and bloom. Whoever had designed it possessed a keen eye for beauty, each plant chosen with obvious care and an affinity for nature.She'd even acquired a new cat from its depths, a stray orange tom she found wandering among the hydrangea bushes one morning. An offered dish of milk and he'd been her bosom beau ever since. She'd decided to call him Ranunculus because Buttercup was far too feminine a name for such a large and impressive male. She gazed at him now where he slept in the sunshine, basking like a small potentate in the heat of the day.
Tracy Anne Warren
The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church. She pushed open the door and went in. She liked the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library past and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass.
Betty Smith
Plus there’s the fact,” he went on, making it clear he didn’t need me to reply anyway, “that music is a total constant. That’s why we have such a strong visceral connection to it, you know? Because a song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment. Which is pretty amazing, when you actually think about it.
Sarah Dessen
Get in front of the ball you won't get hurt. That's what you've got a chest for young man.
John McGraw
And you find that sometimes you search to fill a void that doesn’t exist until you venture out far enough to create it.
Liz Newman
Moving across levels of the particular and the abstract, trying to avoid a transcendent purchase on the objects of study, we set ourselves up for necessary failure in order to learn how to find our way into post-foundational possibilities.
Patti Lather
Compared to the rest of the world, it's like we're living in Disneyland.
David Servant
I caught myself thinking about falling in love with someone who I hoped was out there right now thinking about the possibility of me, but I quickly banished the notion. It was that kind of thinking that landed me in this situation to begin with. Hope can ruin you.
Perry Moore
It's hard at times, but it makes a kid strong in ways that most people can't understand. Teaches them that even though people are left behind, new ones will inevitable take their place; that every place has something good - and bad - to offer. It makes a kid grow up fast.
Nicholas Sparks
Hats have power. Hats can change you into someone else.
Catherynne M. Valente
The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground.
Jim Butcher
Every man carries with him through life a mirror, as unique and impossible to get rid of as his shadow.
W.H. Auden
You will never understand the real definition of insanity until the day you are told it is unreasonable for you to feel hurt by the very people that hurt you.
Shannon L. Alder
Then, are you master of us all? You didn't teach her that. Was she supposed to imbibe it from my quiet subservience?
Anne Rice
Earthly possessions are transient and ephemeral. Giving away love creates ripples that last for some time.
Debasish Mridha