Quotes by American Authors - Page 1819

In the case of our fair maiden, we have overlooked two very crucial aspects to that myth. On the one hand, none of us ever really believed the sorcerer was real. We thought we could have the maiden without a fight. Honestly, most of us guys thought our biggest battle was asking her out. And second, we have not understood the tower and its relationship to her wound; the damsel is in distress. If masculinity has come under assault, femininity has been brutalized. Eve is the crown of creation, remember? She embodies the exquisite beauty and the exotic mystery of God in a way that nothing else in all creation even comes close to. And so she is the special target of the Evil One; he turns his most vicious malice against her. If he can destroy her or keep her captive, he can ruin the story.
John Eldredge
Well if it isn't little miss 'Call Me Maybe' back from the dead.
Faith Sullivan
They'd put the anesthesia mask on him, and the next instant he was in the recovery room. It was a blackout so complete, it made him doubt the immortality of the soul.
Andrew Klavan
Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.
P.J. O'Rourke
Hairy monkeyballs!” I hiss. “Dogshit on a stick! Puke pancakes!” A head pokes in. Wren, green eyes smiling, walks over to my bed.“I knew you were awake. Who else spews such original and captivating swears?
Sara Wolf
Today pluralism operates as a court religion, while having less and less intellectual credibility. Betraying the plastic terminology in which its directives are framed are the additions to the “Human Rights Code” passed in the Canadian province of Ontario in 1994. The Code cites “human dignity” to justify the criminalization of “conduct or communication [that] promotes the superiority or inferiority of a person or class because of race, class, or sexual orientation.” The law has already been applied to prosecute scholars making hereditarian arguments about social behavior, and its proponents defend this muzzling as necessary for “human dignity.” But never are we told whence that dignity is derived. It is certainly not the one to which the Bible, a text that unequivocally condemns certain “sexual orientations,” refers. Nor are we speaking here about the dignity of nonengineered academic discourse, an act that the supporters of the Ontario Human Rights Code consider to be criminal if judged insensitive. Yet the pluralist advocates of human rights codes that now operate in Canada, Australia, England, and on the European continent assume there is a human dignity. Indeed this dignity is so widely and passionately accepted, or so it is asserted, that we must criminalize unkind communication. In the name of that supposedly axiomatic dignity, we are called upon to suppress scholarship and even to imprison its authors.
Paul Edward Gottfried
Accept every blind date you can get even with a girl who wears jeans. Maybe you can talk her out of them.
Abigail Van Buren
All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom.
Rachel Kushner
I don't know why anyone would be scared of a homeless person. The truly scary people are all the murder mystery writers. They spend all day thinking of the perfect plot on how to kill someone and get away with it.
Shannon L. Alder
Last year I told Lori I thought I might be bi. Ever since, whenever she saw me looking at another girl, she asked if I liked her. Lori didn't get that sometimes it was fun just to notice people without having to think about whether you liked them or not.
Robin Talley
You're dead, George. You just don't have the sense to lie down.
Stephen King
At the very point that I’ve taken something for granted, I have at that same moment taken it to its grave. And if I look around, I realize I’ve cultivated quite a cemetery.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Chloroplasts bear chlorophyll; they give the green world its color, and they carry out the business of photosynthesis. Around the inside perimeter of each gigantic cell trailed a continuous loop of these bright green dots. They spun . . . they pulsed, pressed, and thronged . . . they shone, they swarmed in ever-shifting files around and around the edge of the cell; they wandered, they charged, they milled, raced . . . they flowed and trooped greenly . . . All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts . . . If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring’s center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish’s tail.
Annie Dillard
The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love.
Toni Morrison
Fear stagnation not adventure.
Debasish Mridha
If you accept the existence of advertising, you accept a system designed to persuade and to dominate minds by interfering in people's thinking patterns. You also accept that the system will be used by the sorts of people who like to influence people and are good at it. No person who did not wish to dominate others would choose to use advertising, or choosing it, succeed in it. So the basic nature of advertising and all technologies created to serve it will be consistent with this purpose, will encourage this behaviour in society, and will tend to push social evolution in this direction.
Jerry Mander
When Mother and I learned that Father was dying, Father asked me to sing for him," she said. "Mother insisted that I only sing songs from their youthful days together. She wanted me to take her mind off Father's pain, But when she stepped away, Father asked me to sing songs about pain. About loss. About the world without him. When I played those songs, he would cry. It was the only way he could cry. And now it's the only way I know to cry.""We need you to lead us in crying, Lesyl, or we'll drown in unshed tears." [King Cal-Raven replied]
Jeffrey Overstreet
I can weave threads of myself into a tapestry already designed by others.
Sara Raasch
Terence: As my old da used to tell me, 'never trust a rich man'.David: Good thing I'm only moderately rich.Terence: Which is why I only moderately distrust you.
Sabrina Jeffries
The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch.....Laura Acosta
Lynne Sharon Schwartz
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
Jeanne’s sisters thought nothing of themselves.... Helen stayed up late in Brookline, baking. Lemon squares, and brownies, pecan bars, apple cake, sandy almond cookies. Alone in her kitchen, she wrapped these offerings in waxed paper and froze them in tight-lipped containers....Helen was the baker of the family. What she felt could not be purchased. She grieved from scratch.
Allegra Goodman
I had gotten so used to the taste of rain that I forgot what the sun tasted like. Bittersweet.
Ana Patrick
Like the magnolia tree, She bends with the wind,Trials and tribulation may weather her, Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms, See her standing there, like steel, With her roots forever buried,Deep in her Southern soil.
Nancy B. Brewer
It seemed inequitable at best that one could and did gain a reputation for things that left one both physically and emotionally unsatisfied.
Thomm Quackenbush
But one of the big lessons I have learned from my journey is you can't please everyone, so don't try.
Toni Aleo
In some mystical way, Lenny seemed to ennoble work more than anyone I had ever met"Also in "Stories and Scripts:an Anthology
Zack Love
Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.
Henry David Thoreau
Imperfection is my ticket, perfection is my pursuit.
Paul Travis
An Irishman walks into a pub,” she begins and the bar went silent. “The bartender asks him, ‘What'll you have?’” Her Irish accent was spot on. “The man says, ‘Give me three pints of Guinness, please.’ The bartender brings him three pints and the man proceeds to alternately sip one, then the other, then the third until they're gone. He then orders three more.“The bartender says, ‘Sir, no need to order as many at a time. I’ll keep an eye on it and when you get low, I'll bring you a fresh one.’ The man replies, ‘You don't understand. I have two brothers, one in Australia and one in the States. We made a vow to each other that every Saturday night we'd still drink together. So right now, me brothers have three Guinness stouts too, and we're drinking together.’“The bartender thought this a wonderful tradition and every week the man came in and ordered three beers.” January’s playing and voice became more solemn, dramatic. “But one week, he ordered only two.” The crowd oohed and ahhed. “He slowly drank them,” she continued darkly, “and then ordered two more. The bartender looked at him sadly. ‘Sir, I know your tradition, and, agh, I'd just like to say that I'm sorry for your loss.’“The man looked on him strangely before it finally dawned on him. ‘Oh, me brothers are fine - I just quit drinking.
Fisher Amelie
I writeNotFor the sake of gloryNot For the sake of fameNotFor the sake of successBut for the sake of my soul
Beth Nimmo
Children betrayed their parents by becoming their own people.
Leslye Walton
I was certain t find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.
Monique Truong
I'm looking at you through the glassDon't know how much time has pastOh God it feels like foreverBut no one tells that forever feels like homeSitting all alone in your head
Stone Sour
Bedtime storiesEventide RhapsodiesAnthologies of MemoryPlease enter cautiously and feel free to open what is closed
Erin Morgenstern
In our heart we know that life loves life. Yet we feast on some of the other life-forms with which we share our planet; we kill to live. Taste is what carries us across that rocky moral terrain, what makes the horror palatable, and the paradox we could not defend by reason melts into a jungle of sweet temptations.
Diane Ackerman
Valek was liquid in motion. As i watched him, one word came to mind: beautiful.
Maria V. Snyder
Human inertia induces us to believe that our lives will never change unless we relocate.
Kilroy J. Oldster
We were in a state of suspended animation: Oblivious to the world around us, time seemingly standing still, and our perceptions focused only on a couple specific parts of our anatomy. In fact, only one part. My tongue seemed numb, but the feeling in my core was building in an incredible crescendo. Finally, my orgasm exploded. I heard myself scream, as if from another dimension. My head became light, and I thought I would pass out.
Simone Freier
Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything.
Meg Rosoff
He woke up and fought another battle and won. Then he went to bed and slept again and dreamed again and then he woke up and won again and slept again and he hardly noticed when waking became sleeping. Nor did he care.
Orson Scott Card
What was the point of even having a conversation when words couldn't be trusted?
James Dashner
We need to get home and put some ointments and ice on the stings. Vinegar will make it worse, so if you thought Giraffe Boy could pee on you, you’re shit out of luck.”She agrees as if prepared for this—the punishment, the medication, the swelling, the pain that hurts her now and the pain that will hurt her later. She seems okay with my disapproval. She’s gotten her story, after all, and she’s beginning to see how much easier physical pain is to tolerate than emotional pain. I’m unhappy that she’s learning this at such a young age.“The hospital will have ointments and ice,” she says.
Kaui Hart Hemmings
You know, there are just some things you never expect to face even on this job. A flying primate that shoots fire out its nose is one of them.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Chance is the nature of our universe. […] madness represents a chaotic reservoir of surprises. Some surprises can be valuable.
Frank Herbert
There are always waves on the water. Sometimes they are big, sometimes they are small, and sometimes they are almost imperceptible. The water’s waves are churned up by the winds, which come and go and vary in direction and intensity, just as do the winds of stress and change in our lives, which stir up the waves in our minds.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Progress is hardly ever dramatic; in fact, it is usually very slow. As every parent and teacher knows, education is never a matter of ten-step plans or quick formulas, but of faithful commitment to the mundane challenges of daily life: getting up from the sofa to spend time with our children, loving them and disciplining them, becoming involved in their lives at school and, most important, making sure they have a wholesome family life to return to at home. Maybe that is why Jesus teaches us to ask for strength little by little, on a daily basis - "Give us this day our daily bread" - and why he stresses the significance of even the smallest, humblest beginnings: "Wherever two of you agree about anything you ask for, it shall be done for you... For where two or three come together in my name, I shall be with them" (Mt. 18:19-20).
Johann Christoph Arnold
Cater to your customers’ lifestyles. It will create instant rapport and a lasting sense of “I belong here.
Marilyn Suttle
When you are angry, don’t react. Respond with consideration, kindness, and love.
Debasish Mridha
Breaking up is hard to do. But, bustin him in the head ain't that easy, either.
Lois Greiman
The American people are free to do exactly what they are told.
Ward Churchill
Over the years all these vampire movies have come out and nobody looks like a vampire anymore.
Johnny Depp
Far too much horrific wast of human capacity is disguised as order, predictability, and minimizing uncertainty.
Bill Jensen
Eons of suffering, brutality and struggle have paved the way through the corridors of time to create this moment, where you exist as an exalted expression of life.
Bryant McGill
Us" versus "them" is not in our genes. It is something we learn.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
I don't know about you, but I find the idea of a school at night time - imagining the silent classrooms in total darkness and the playgrounds left lonesome and bare - creepily peculiar.
Elizabeth Newton
Years ago, a member of Congress slipped a laminated quote into my hand that he must have thought I would find meaningful. I paid little attention at first and unfortunately I don’t recall just who gave me the quote. I placed it next to my voting card and have carried it ever since. The quote came from Elie Wiesel’s book One Generation After. The quote was entitled “Why I Protest.”Author Elie Wiesel tells the story of the one righteous man of Sodom, who walked the streets protesting against the injustice of this city. People made fun of him, derided him. Finally, a young person asked: “Why do you continue your protest against evil; can’t you see no one is paying attention to you?” He answered, “I’ll tell you why I continue. In the beginning, I thought I would change people. Today, I know I cannot. Yet, if I continue my protest, at least I will prevent others from changing me.”tI’m not that pessimistic that we can’t change people’s beliefs or that people will not respond to the message of liberty and peace. But we must always be on guard not to let others change us once we gain the confidence that we are on the right track in the search for truth.
Ron Paul
Looking up at that starry sky gave him the creeps: it was too big, too black. It was all too possible to imagine it turning blood-red, all too possible to imagine a Face forming in lines of fire.
Stephen King
Still, even when false, legends can be most informative.
Timothy Zahn