Quotes by American Authors - Page 1831

Define yourself before someone does it for you.
Debasish Mridha
Extremes should be avoided.
Billy Graham
I'm here by choice, I reminded myself. I'm here because I can't bear to be not- here anymore. I'm here because I can't tell right from wrong, light from dark. I'm here because I can't stand being me. I'm here because I don't want anyone to know where I am.
Cate Tiernan
the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind . . . [from] nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night.
Paul Bowles
Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens 'till parents stop clenching their fists around precious things and people, let go, & trust God!
Gary Patton
Those of our writers who have possessed a vivid personal talent have been paralyzed by a want of social background.
Van Wyck Brooks
Writing is.... being able to take something whole and fiercely alive that exists inside you in some unknowable combination of thought, feeling, physicality, and spirit, and to then store it like a genie in tense, tiny black symbols on a calm white page. If the wrong reader comes across the words, they will remain just words. But for the right readers, your vision blooms off the page and is absorbed into their minds like smoke, where it will re-form, whole and alive, fully adapted to its new environment.
Mary Gaitskill
I shouldn’t have gone out so far, fish,” he said. “Neither for you nor for me. I’m sorry, fish.
Ernest Hemingway
A bear! I've landed on a wild and wicked bear!
Vonnie Davis
We are not called to embody Jesus ourselves; He has already been incarnated and is still even now! No, we are not called to be Jesus; we are called to fall at His feet and worship Him. We are called to affirm that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." [John 1:14] And it is through this worship, through recognizing His rightful place, that we are finally humbled.When we are consumed with God's glory, we forget to worry about our own. When our eyes are fixed on Him as the source of all goodness and truth and beauty, we accept that we are not. When we are enamored by His worth and majesty, we can stop being so enamored with ourselves. And fascinatingly, when we seek God's glory, we'll be able to appreciate it in the people around us. Instead of seeing them as threats to our own glory, we will see them as beautiful reflections of His.
Hannah Anderson
You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it.
Louis L'Amour
Awareness is the starting point of every quest and the outcome of every journey.
Azim Jamal & Brian Tracy
You didn’t care about anything except my tongue tracing the path of your thong. All the way down…" Rafe St. Sebastian
Samanthe Beck
Pain ebbs, And like cool balm, An opiate weariness Settles on eye-lids, on relaxed Pale wrists.
Adelaide Crapsey
Before the storm, he'd been a man who never met a stranger, never seemed to doubt himself. He could run faster than anyone; there had been joy in his movements, his world was full of possibilities, and he'd stood taller than he actually was. Like a house cat, Mae had once thought privately, who discounted the rumor of tigers.
Kate Southwood
The army don’t teach enlisted men how to fly,” I said, trying to hold onto my dignity. “We gotta do that for ourselves.
Amy Lane
Garp didn't want a daughter because of men. Because of bad men, certainly; but even, he thought, because of men like me.
John Irving
It's not that we spend five days looking forward to just two. It's that most people do what they enjoy most on those two days. Imagine living a life where everyday are your Saturdays and Sundays. Make everyday your weekend. Make everyday a play-day…
James A. Murphy
What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.
Walter Isaacson
To use language is to enter into the territory of categories, which are as necessary as they are dangerous.
Rebecca Solnit
Close your eyes. Now see the world, not with your vision but with your feelings and passion.
Debasish Mridha
Situational awareness enables you to observe your periphery with a clear vision and emotional foresight, which may inevitably keep you socially, physically, or professionally out of harm's way. Connect the dots.
Susan C.Young
A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end.... They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. They could not stop themselves from doing what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough.
Robin Hobb
Who said death is dead? He's fully alive, traveling around the world, throwing shadows and soaking in the sun. Visiting the young and old; placing bets and dicing regrets, for the worse or a better off place.
Anthony Liccione
When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.
Paula Fox
By law, a slaw was three-fifths of a person. It came to me that what I’d just suggested would seem paramount to proclaiming vegetables equal to animals, animals equal to humans, women equal to men, men equal to angels. I was upending the order of creation. Strangest of all, it was the first time thoughts of equality had entered my head, and I could only attribute it to God, with whom I’d lately taken up and who was proving to be more insurrectionary than law-abiding.
Sue Monk Kidd
It’s just snow,” Lesa said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not going to hurt you.”Kimmy smoothed her hands over her blond hair. “Sugar melts.”“Yeah, and shit floats.” Lesa took her seat, yanking out last night’s English homework.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
Next time she’d have to ask him to keep the light on while he did it, so she could watch his face. That was the best part of the whole thing as far as she was concerned, the way a guy’s face contorted so violently and then relaxed, as if some terrible mystery had just been solved.
Tom Perrotta
Girls get under each other's skin. We get too close, too attached, too crazy, and then we can't let go. Our claws sink too deep. When we separate, we tear each other apart.
Leah Raeder
Many parents preach to their children but do not set good examples. Parents want the children to do as they say, not as they do.
Billy Graham
She read Dickens in the same spirit she would have eloped with him.
Eudora Welty
Reapers are the hands of Death. Death might be the judge, but the Reapers are the executioners. They police all Fae."t"So kill the bastards."tTaraeth glanced at his glass. "MNo one knows who the Reapers are. No one as even seen Death. We can't fight what we don't see or know."t"So... you're afraid of some whispers?"t"What do you think has been hunting the Fae besides the Kings? The Reapers."tMikkel made a sound at the back of his throat. "Has anyone ever seen one of these Reapers?"t"You see one, you die."t"Of course you do," Mikkel scoffed.
Donna Grant
All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life. Then, even the holiest of words are only words.
Ming-Dao Deng
There are worse things you can do to people you love than kill them.
Chuck Palahniuk
Heat roared within him. Greedy heat. He wanted her....tShe was in over her head, and it seemed... so was he.
Erin Kellison
The past is a bucket of ashes so live not in your yesterdays nor just for tomorrow but in the here and now.
Carl Sandburg
We'd be the safest country in the world if the world knew we didn't have a gun. Men are not killed because they get mad at each other. They're killed because one has a gun.
Jeannette Rankin
Nobody is better than me.
Jason Innocent
The guy thought he was Mick Jagger. I felt bad for him.
Kami Garcia
When we arrived at my home north of the city, my five-year-old son Magnus, brimming with the confidence he'd gained in two full weeks of kindergarten, opened the front door and asked John, "Is it true you live in a tent?""Yes, it is," John said."Why don't you have a house like everybody else?"John leaned in to meet Magnus' dubious stare. "Because I endeavor to remain flexible.
Mark Adams
I swore never to be silent whenever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lies are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are prosecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must--at that moment--become the center of the universe.
Elie Wiesel
it's hard to find time to think about Kansas.
Marilynne Robinson
I’m fairly certain I’m having my first truly religious experience, and it’s probably a very bad thing that it’s happening in a church, but it’s over a sculpture. Mental note: Add idol worship to your list for confession.
Lisa Desrochers
But the compulsive overachievement of today's elite college students - the sense that they need to keep running as fast as they can - is not the only thing that keeps them from forming the deeper relationships that might relieve their anguish. Something more insidious is operating, too: a resistance to vulnerability, a fear of looking like the only one who isn't capable of handling the pressure. These are young people who have always succeeded at everything, in part by projecting the confidence that they always will. Now, as they get to college, the stakes are higher and the competition fiercer. Everybody thinks that they are the only one who's suffering, so nobody says anything, so everybody suffers. Everyone feels like a fraud; everybody thinks that everybody else is smarter than they are.
William Deresiewicz
You can never recover from losing a person you love, but you can find a way to let it be part of your life rather than letting it take over every part of you
Darien Gee
The beginning of all pain and suffering in the world started with one act of disobedience. Christian and non-Christian alike have inherited the consequences from our common ancestors, Adam and Eve—our polluted environment and flawed human nature.
Billy Graham
Theology: (15) Somebody made everything for some reason.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Everything is more interesting and complex in my mind.
Mark Bradford
Every summer, like the roses, childhood returns.
Marty Rubin
A friend can tell you things you don't want to tell yourself
Frances Ward Weller
A liar with a pen is a writer
Genesis Quihuis
Rather than street crime, I argue that a better analogy is to voting. Having a high opportunity cost of time—resulting, say, from a high-paying job and a good education—should discourage people from voting, yet it is precisely those with a high opportunity cost of time who tend to vote. Why? Because they care about influencing the outcome and consider themselves sufficiently well informed to want to express their opinions. Terrorists also care about influencing political outcomes. Instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, to understand what makes a terrorist we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose their extremist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead they are people who care so deeply and fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it.
Alan B. Krueger
Intelligence is not measured by how much you know, but by how much you have the capacity to learn.
Francesca Zappia
That I always had space to run and that I had the opportunity to play with my imagination. I also loved that my mum drew and painted with me. I always remember that my parents loved me, and that is essential when you're a kid; they always showed me how proud they were of my achievements. It's also very important when parents put their kids' drawings on the refrigerator.
Taylor Swift
If you love Alex now, then love him forever. Make him laugh again, and cherish the time you spend together. Take walks and ride your bikes, curl up on the couch and watch movies beneath a blanket. Make him breakfast, but don't spoil him. Let him make breakfast for you as well, so he can show you he thinks you're special. Kiss him and make love to him and consider yourself lucky for having met him, for he's the kind of man who'll prove you right.
Nicholas Sparks
Without loyalty all the training in the world is useless. Worse than useless.
Robert Ferrigno
Are you on our side...and want to be different, or are you on that side and want to throw a football at my head!?
Gerard Way
Her arms groped forward to guide her when her tears blocked her vision in darkness. Then she couldn't run any more. She sank to her knees and began to cry in her terror. She wanted Gary.She suddenly felt strong arms around her. She bent her head to bury it in Gary's shoulder, trembling in the darkness.Whimpering like a small animal in a trap, she pushed herself closer to him and said in a choked voice, "I'm so frightened!""I know, my love," the voice said. "I'm so sorry you were hurt."She felt herself being pulled up to him, his grip around her tight. It was a strange feeling in this pitch-black hallway, where not even the light of the moon cast any illumination. The lips she touched were cold and yet they responded to her with an unusual warmth. His hands massaged her back. Something, Melanie thought, was wrong with that. The hands were too smooth, not like a plastered wrist would feel."Gary?" she asked, backing away. She didn't trust what she couldn't see."My love," the voice whispered, "there is no need to fear now. I shall protect you from those who mean you harm.
Clare McNally
W turned on his heel and began walking toward the door at the far wall. And by walking I mean, of course, not moving at all, at least not to the naked eye, because his strides could only be measured in micrometers. His creaky legs made barely the tiniest of forward steps, so he’d taken four strides before I noticed any lateral movement at all.“I'll be right back.”“Geologically speaking, of course,” HARV said.
John Zakour
I think I exist, therefore I exist. I think.
David Gerrold