Quotes by American Authors - Page 1778

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.
Michael Eric Dyson
Cities get built out of poet's dreams.
Marty Rubin
Sally laughed. "When you first told me you were interested in Decebel, I honestly thought that there was no way you two would ever work. But man, you are both such freaks, I honestly don't think anyone else could put up with either of you.""Or keep up with us." Jen winked.
Quinn Loftis
Chip, I know you don't understand this, but I'd take it as a personal favor if you'd stop trying to marry your mother off to my brothers.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.
Robin Williams
They were like her rocks. Imperfect and surprising and maybe better in the long run than certainties. Chances, she thought, were life
Veronica Rossi
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have a childhood that was _not_ like mine. I have no real frame of reference, but when I question strangers I've found that their childhood generally had much less blood in it, and also that strangers seem uncomfortable when you question them about their childhood. But really, what else are you going to talk about in line at the liquor store? Childhood trauma seems like the natural choice, since it's the reason why most of us are in line there to begin with.
Jenny Lawson
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun
Charles Bukowski
Facts and truth really don’t have much to do with each other.
William Faulkner
...it was just a version of Rimbaud in Harar: the exile, a selfish beast with modest fantasies of power, secretly enjoying a life of beer drinking and scribbling and occasional mythomania in a nice climate where there were no interruptions, such as unwelcome letters or faxes or cell phones. It was an eccentric ideal, life lived off the map.¨
Paul Theroux
I don't teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. I teach the life. The odd thing is most of the things that stop an inexperienced writer are so far from the truth as to be nearly beside the point. When you feel glosbal doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don't have any doubt.
Richard Bausch
Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you’d get dressed up in a nurse’s outfit and give me a sponge bath?" asked Jace."It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath.""As soon as I’m back on my feet, handsome," said Simon."I knew we should have left you a rat.
Cassandra Clare
There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.
Michael Cunningham
Rights mean you have a right to your life. You have a right to your liberty, and you should have a right to keep the fruits of your labor....I, in a way, don’t like to use those terms: gay rights, women’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s the right to your liberty.
Ron Paul
And in despair I bowed my head;"There is no peace on earth," I said;"For hate is strong,And mocks the songOf peace on earth, good-will to men!"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!The Wrong shall fail,the Right prevail,With peace on earth, good-will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I will fight untill the end
Breaking Benjamin
We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kids who haven't figured that out by the time they're ten.... Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Love is the best drug, bar none.
Crystal Woods
This isn’t a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It’s a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it’s printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.
Chila Woychik
If the achievement of so much in life could not make one happy, then why bother living?
Christopher Bram
Salvation is for sinners
Ricky Maye
There is only one motive for writing a novel: to be published and read. To me there is no distinction between the mystery novel and the novel, only between good books and bad books. A good book takes the reader into a new world of experience; it is an experiment. A bad book, unless the writing is inept, reinforces the intransigent attitude of the reader not to experiment with a new world. Since there are criminals and psychopaths and sociopaths in all my novels they are in a way psychological thrillers.
John Franklin Bardin
In fact, biology is chaos. Biological systems are the product not of logic but of evolution, an inelegant process. Life does not choose the logically best design to meet a new situation. It adapts what already exists...The result, unlike the clean straight lines of logic, is often irregular, messy.
John M. Barry
When he told it, I remembered. He handed me my past like… like a spear. But I do not know if I should take it. Is it still mine, if I do not want it?
Rick Riordan
they thought they were heroes when they were only cinders in the eye of humanity too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of irritation they are able to cause greater personalities than themselves
Don Marquis
There is nothing more common than for people who want to talk about God to lose interest in the people they are talking to.
Eugene H. Peterson
I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last forty have been a homecoming.
Thomas C. Oden
Hospital waits are bad ones. The fact that they happen to pretty much all of us, sooner or later, doesn’t make them any less hideous. They’re always just a little too cold. It always smells just a little bit too sharp and clean. It’s always quiet, so quiet that you can hear the fluorescent lights - another constant, those lights - humming. Pretty much everyone else there is in the same bad predicament you are, and there isn’t much in the way of cheerful conversation. And there’s always a clock in sight. The clock has superpowers. It always seems to move too slowly. Look up at it and it will tell you the time. Look up an hour and a half later, and it will tell you two minutes have gone by. Yet it somehow simultaneously has the ability to remind you of how short life is, to make you acutely aware of how little time someone you love might have remaining to them.
Jim Butcher
He turned back to Lara, his alert gaze raking over her tearful face. Somehow the solid reality of his presence eased her panic. He folded her in his arms, anchoring her against his chest, murmuring quietly into her hair.Sniffling, Lara reached inside his waistcoat until her palm rested over the steady beat of his heart. The sensation of his warm breath sinking down to her scalp me her quiver. It was so terribly intimate, crying in his arms... even more personal than making love. But he had never felt so much like a husband to her as he did in this moment. Quieting, she inhaled his familiar scent and let out a shaky sigh.
Lisa Kleypas
How kind of you to pay us a call, Uncle,” came the biting lash of Sebastian’s voice. “Come to offer us felicitations, have you?” “I’ve come to collect my niece,” Peregrine snarled. “She is promised to my son. Your illicit marriage will not stan
Lisa Kleypas
Fortunately, our colleges and universities are fully cognizant of the problems I have been delineating and take concerted action to address them. Curricula are designed to give coherence to the educational experience and to challenge students to develop a strong degree of moral awareness. Professors, deeply involved with the enterprise of undergraduate instruction, are committed to their students' intellectual growth and insist on maintaining the highest standards of academic rigor. Career services keep themselves informed about the broad range of postgraduate options and make a point of steering students away from conventional choices. A policy of noncooperation with U.S. News has taken hold, depriving the magazine of the data requisite to calculate its rankings. Rather than squandering money on luxurious amenities and exorbitant administrative salaries, schools have rededicated themselves to their core missions of teaching and the liberal arts. I'm kidding, of course.
William Deresiewicz
It's been said that the role of the artist is to teach us to see and that's true. However, the role of other artists is to teach me how they see. To learn how I see is somethig that cannot be taught but must be learned.
Brooks Jensen
Spread the message of peace to become a pigeon carrying peace everywhere.
Debasish Mridha
We are all born and someday we’ll all die. Most likely to some degree alone.What if our aloneness isn’t a tragedy? What if our aloneness is what allows us to speak the truth without being afraid? What if our aloneness is what allows us to adventure – to experience the world as a dynamic presence – as a changeable, interactive thing?If I lived in Bosnia or Rwanda or who knows where else, needless death wouldn’t be a distant symbol to me, it wouldn’t be a metaphor, it would be a reality.And I have no right to this metaphor. But I use it to console myself. To give a fraction of meaning to something enormous and needless.This realization. This realization that I will live my life in this world where I have privileges.I can’t cool boiling waters in Russia. I can’t be Picasso. I can’t be Jesus. I can’t save the planet single-handedly.I can wash dishes.
Rachel Corrie
If I was a worrier I'd worry, but not being a worrier I'm just sort of confused and pissed off.
Mykle Hansen
You’re tired of hearing about racism? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it.” ~ Jon Stewart
Chris Smith
I saw a woman who physically and spiritually blocked out the definition of being celestial, and replaced it with her own divine beauty. She was transcendent. She was beyond astonishing in her presence. But what she truly did, which was beyond the scope of an average woman's power, was step above the barriers of reality and illusion with her pure, majestic, and omnipotent beauty.
Lionel Suggs
Above everything else, genuinely love yourself first. Self-love is powerful and it’s the best love that you will ever have. When you love who YOU are, your relationships will be healthier and your life will be happier. Self-love sets the standard in how we allow others to treat us and how we treat ourselves. Your happiness and well-being is important. Protect it by always valuing who you are!
Stephanie Lahart
Fragments of energy sizzled against my skin where he touched me, like sparks that shoot from a sparkler you played with as a kid.
Jodie Andrefski
Better is not good enough, and it's a shame that anyone would be willing to settle for so little.
Roxane Gay
Right now I can't even control my own imagination as it grips my hair and drags me into the dark
Tahereh Mafi
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Alan W. Watts
Fate is a lazy man’s excuse for avoiding curiosity.
Brian Farrey
At least it would have been perfect, if it wasn't for my mother.
Heather James
With patience and perseverance my day will come!
Susan Segovia Munoz
There were no actual villains, just inertia. The administration genuinely wanted more diversity for reasons of its image as well as fairness, notwithstanding the cranky alumni letters in The Daily Princetonian. ... Hiring committees had not a clue where to look for or how to attract suitable candidates. And so, though a high-level recruitment plan existed on paper, there was only foot-dragging and defensive excuse making.
Sonia Sotomayor
When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.
Orson Scott Card
Writing fulfils an insatiable drive. Finishing the story satisfies my thirst. But I must keep drinking until the story quenches a buyer.
Ace Antonio Hall
If you walk in any direction walk in the direction toward your greatest dream.
Shannon L. Alder
Sometimes to walk in shaded parts of Manhattan is to be inserted into a Magritte: the street is night while the sky is day.
Joseph O'Neill
while "freedom" from magic is certainly invoked as a constitutive element of modern modes of subjectivity, this freedom is purchased only at the price of potent new forms of social control and regimenta
Randall Styers
My dear cousin has a very odd relationship with fear -- though mostly she's too busy to be bothered with it.
Jim Butcher
Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.
James Baldwin
I have voices in my headI'm a slave to imaginary peopleI feel what they feelI experience what they experience I live in their world And I'm devoted to translating their storiesI'm not crazy, I'm a writer
Charisse Spiers
What was the appeal? Particularly from the very young? A need to belong? some twisted tribal urge? how easy it is for the power-hungry to seduce those who want answers. But were they that different from myself? We all want answers, we all want the "truth"--confirmation that the universe is a good place and that we're protected from harm. We all want to believe there is an order.
Connie di Marco
Forget about self-image and self-judgment. It's about self-love, and no one teaches you that at school. No one teaches you that if you accept and love yourself, nothing and no one can touch you. This is the only face and body you're ever going to get, so be comfortable and happy in it. Own it. Own every aspect of who you are and present it to the world with the utmost pride.
Connor Franta
To be a success, love what you do and what you love.
Debasish Mridha
Believe that you can and you are halfway there
Theodore Roosevelt
I hope you read this, whoever you are, and imagine that there is a hypothetical person out there who needs your love, has been waiting silently, patiently for it all his life, is flawed and downright ugly at times and yet would have just eaten up any tiny bit of affection you had been willing to give, had you ever stopped your own happy life to notice. And then imagine that this hypothetical person is real, because he probably is.... Wish I’d met you. Wish I wasn’t your hypothetical. But you’re reading this, which means a few minutes ago, I went into that bathroom and pulled the trigger. You probably heard it. Sorry. You’re welcome. Thank you. And please. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please.
Charles Yu
There was another thing I had forgotten about the South: It was the one place on earth where an unsuspecting person could get killed by kindness.
Michael Lee West