Quotes by American Authors - Page 1863

I am not a f**king pleasure girl, damn you! I’m an officer!
Morgan Hawke
Each day brings a fresh opportunity for you to set the standard of how dedicated and committed you are to your needs, wants, goals, and relationships.
Steve Maraboli
Suffer" he commanded seductively. "With me...or because of me.
Donna Lynn Hope
Be awesome! Be a book nut!
Dr. Seuss
For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe... until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers.
Robert A. Heinlein
Imagine for a moment that we are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, that we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, that trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, that this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and that these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. To me, that understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.
David Eagleman
They say it is a wide road that leads to war and only a narrow path that leads home again.
Bob Massie
They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts.
Jennifer Donnelly
It is the mystery of the unknownThat fascinates us; we are children stillWayward and wistful; with one hand we clingTo the familiar things we call our own,And with the other, resolute of will,Grope in the dark for what the day will bring
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Every heart has a unique story to tell. We just need a mind to listen.
Debasish Mridha
Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it tha
Cormac McCarthy
Stupid Ape: I had to quantify this with the word “stupid” so as not to offend the ape community. Large of limb, impotent of intellect, he was the kind of guy who lettered in leg-breaking at thug school but flunked the written exam because he didn't know which end of the e-pencil to use.
John Zakour
How will I make a people who do not understand the power of belief believe?
Brom
I looked at all the people, feeling sorry for them. They were still subordinate to clock and calendar. Absolved of that, I stood becalmed.
Richard Matheson
Loyalty is not loyalty unless one clings to it in the face of adversity.
Lisa Tawn Bergren
Her free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she should have never left me here, where her friends might look to me for help.Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, but she'd let no tears fall. "This is where we blame those who are responsible, Cooper, she told me, her voice very soft. "The colemongers, and the bought Dogs at Tradesmen's kennel. We'll leave an offering for him with the Black God when all this is done, and we'll occupy ourselves with tearing these colemongers apart. all right? We put grief aside for now.
Tamora Pierce
If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.
Aaron Sorkin
Sometimes it's the person giving you the medicine who's making you sick.
Steve Maraboli
To enjoy beauty in the company of myself is to experience beauty bound by the limits of the sole person that I am. But, to experience beauty in the company of God is to experience beauty bound by the limits of Who God is, which is to experience beauty without limits.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I can’t believe I thought this was going to be boring. This is great!
Denis Markell
To do more, is not necessarily to do better.
Katy Butler
We must talk and reach for common understandings, precisely because all of us are imperfect and can never act with the certainty that God is on our side; and yet at times we must act nonetheless, as if we are certain, protected from error only by providence.
Barack Obama
Your brain is doing some great work when it's laughing.
Jon Scieszka
Language and hearing are seated in the cerebral cortex, the folded gray matter that covers the first couple of millimeters of the outer brain like wrapping paper. When one experiences silence, absent even reading, the cerebral cortex typically rests. Meanwhile, deeper and more ancient brain structures seem to be activated--the subcortical zones. People who live busy, noisy lives are rarely granted access to these areas. Silence, it appears, is not the opposite of sound. It is another world altogether, literally offering a deeper level of thought, a journey to the bedrock of the self.
Michael Finkel
I had this teacher who kept telling me that if I was ever in a fair fight, someone had made a mistake,” she said
Jim Butcher
Follow your passion and learn how to make money at it. Or don't follow your passion and learn to make money at that. They are the same. It's a choice.
Richie Norton
I am in awe of the perpetual tumult of the sea. I am moved by the still place on the horizon where the sky begins. I am stirred by the soaring and dipping fields that make the landscape into a rumpled green counterpane. I thought I would never have such powerful feelings again. I thought I would live through the rest of my life having experiences, and thoughts, but I never thought I would again feel deeply-- I was convinced that my wounds had healed and become thick scars, essentially numb.
Katharine Weber
I intend to judge things for myself; to judge wrongly, I think, is more honorable than not to judge at all.
Henry James
You made them hate me." Said Ender"So? What will you do about it? Crawl in a corner? Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well better be." -Graff
Orson Scott Card
I don't ever forget things when it comes to you, Rebecca.” A dark emotion flashed in his eyes. “I can't make up for the years I didn't show, nor will I try because you can never make up for lost time, but you have to know how important you are to me.” -Hunter Beckman
Nikki Lynn Barrett
A bully hides his fears with fake bravado. That is the opposite of self-assertiveness.
Nathaniel Branden
I am overwhelmed by the grace and persistence of my people.
Maya Angelou
We might miss the sign or we may be unable to read the expression, but it is almost a contradiction in terms to say that a dog feels something but does not show it. What a dog feels, a dog shows, and, conversely, what a dog shows, a dog actually does feel.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
If you think it's bad now, my friend, wait till we reach a town!' He shook his head and brushed at his tattered, dirty shirtsleeve. 'Do try to remember we're visitors-and not welcome ones-if you should feel moved to reason with anyone.
David Weber
If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.
James Surowiecki
If God made anything better than women, I think he kept it for himself.
Kris Kristofferson
Everything is melting in nature. We think we see objects, but our eyes are slow and partial. Nature is blooming and withering in long puffy respirations, rising and falling in oceanic wave-motion. A mind that opened itself fully to nature without sentimental preconception would be glutted by nature’s coarse materialism, its relentless superfluity. An apple tree laden with fruit: how peaceful, how picturesque. But remove the rosy filter of humanism from our gaze and look again. See nature spuming and frothing, its mad spermatic bubbles endlessly spilling out and smashing in that inhuman round of waste, rot, and carnage. From the jammed glassy cells of sea roe to the feathery spores poured into the air from bursting green pods, nature is a festering hornet’s nest of aggression and overkill. This is the chthonian black magic with which we are infected as sexual beings; this is the daemonic identity that Christianity so inadequately defines as original sin and thinks it can cleanse us of. Procreative woman is the most troublesome obstacle to Christianity’s claim to catholicity, testified by its wishful doctrines of Immaculate Conception and Virgin Birth. The procreativeness of chthonian nature is an obstacle to all of western metaphysics and to each man in his quest for identity against his mother. Nature is the seething excess of being.
Camille Paglia
The Gray Man hated his current rental car. He got the distinct impression it hadn't been handled enough by humans when it was young, and now it would never be pleasant to be around.
Maggie Stiefvater
we live now in circumstances that encourage rather than discourage lying; evidence and activity are more easily concealed, and the need to rely on demeanor as an indicator of a person’s truthfulness is greater. And our evolutionary history has not prepared us to be very sensitive to the behavioral clues relevant to lying.
Clancy Martin
Was love ever easy for anyone? If less complicated, would this make it less appreciated? Perhaps love was difficult for good reason. Perhaps everything on God’s green earth was the result of a flawless plan, even that which seemed most muddled.
Roy L. Pickering Jr.
I read one study that indicated when a couple has been together for approximately three hundred hours, even most of those who are trying to be moral will do things they didn't intend originally. They may not even realize that is where the relationship is headed until it happens.
James C. Dobson
Mostly they all were products of single parents, and in the most tragic category - black boys, with no particular criminal inclinations but whose very lack of direction put them in the crosshairs of the world.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Storytelling can save you. Both the telling and the listening.
Catherynne M. Valente
Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.
Amy Waldman
I am a beautiful thing, shaped for fighting.
Maggie Stiefvater
I’m so in love with you, Braith,” he told her, and she felt in her bones that he meant every word. “And do you know why?”“I have no idea,” she replied honestly.“Because I am such an amazing dragon that I know I richly deserve a She-dragon as wonderful as you. See?” he asked, grinning at her. “How could I not love you when you’re so clearly made for me?
G.A. Aiken
Don't let a strong wind blow you over, take flight upon it.
Rob Liano
I cherish genuine conversation, where people actually care what someone else has to say.
Charles F. Glassman
Love everyone. Good people create an impression and not so good people teach you a lesson.
Debasish Mridha
All right, so give me some idea of what you can do," says Haymitch.I can’t do anything," says Peeta, "unless you count baking bread."Sorry, I don’t. Katniss. I already know you’re handy with a knife,” says Haymitch.Not really. But I can hunt,” I say. “With a bow and arrow.”And you’re good?” asks Haymitch.I have to think about it. I’ve been putting food on the table for four years. That’s no small task. I’m not as good as my father was, but he’d had more practice. I’ve better aim than Gale, but I’ve had more practice. He’s a genius with traps and snares. “I’m all right,” I say.
Suzanne Collins
It's not getting from A to B. It's not the beginning or the destination that counts. It's the ride in between...This train is alive with things that should be seen and heard. It's a living, breathing something -- you just have to want to learn its rhythm.
David Baldacci
I wait on my fix:I am a poetry junkie.
Charles Bukowski
Men always fall for frigid women because they put on the best show.
Fanny Brice
I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine.
William Faulkner
I had only some dim and unformed sense, a sense which struck me now and then, and which I could not explain coherently, that for some years the South and particularly the Gulf Coast had been for America what people were still saying California was, and what California seemed to me not to be: the future, the secret source of malevolent and benevolent energy, the psychic center.
Joan Didion
He will love only once - but it will be for always.
Judith McNaught
My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I learned that reading difficult books also brings trouble. I was punished for reading ahead of the class, for being unwilling to speak and act "nicely." I didn't know why I simultaneously feared and adored my female teachers, but I did know that I needed their attention
Hope Jahren
You don't want some tacky Vegas fly-by. You're serious. You're serious about friendships, about your work, your family. You're serious about Star Wars, and you active dislike of Jar Jar Binks---""Well, God. Come on, anyone who---""You're serious," she continued before he went on a Jar Jar rant, "about living your life on your terms, and being easygoing doesn't negate that one bit. You're serious about what kind of kryptonite is more lethal to Superman.""You have to go with the classic green. I told you, the gold can strip Kryptonians' powers permanently, but---"......"Mkae all the lists you want, Cilla. Love? It's green kryptonite. it powers out all the rest.
Nora Roberts
There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid.
Rebecca Serle
There’s a reason you probably haven’t heard much about this aspect of the heartland. This kind of blight can’t be easily blamed on the usual suspects like government or counterculture or high-hat urban policy. The villain that did this to my home state wasn’t the Supreme Court or Lyndon Johnson, showering dollars on the poor or putting criminals back on the street. The culprit is the conservatives’ beloved free-market capitalism, a system that, at its most unrestrained, has little use for smalltown merchants or the agricultural system that supported the small towns in the first place....
Thomas Frank