Quotes by American Authors - Page 1923

Failure will teach you more wisdom than a great success.
Debasish Mridha
If I have learned anything over this last year it’s that you have to live your own life too so that if something we hoped for doesn’t work out, you still have two legs to stand on, you still have your own path.
T.S. Krupa
Beautiful toes are an addition to a woman’s appearance.
Ellen J. Barrier
The electrical grounding system is the largest radio frequency (RF) radiation antenna system ever constructed in the history of mankind.
Steven Magee
Ivy turned. 'He bit you on the neck?' she said, deadpan serious but for her eyes. 'Oh, then it's got to be love. She won't let me bite her neck.
Kim Harrison
It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt
Mark Twain
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
John F Kennedy
Let’s forget the past and keep in mind the future, but enjoy the present moment.
Debasish Mridha
The living owe it to those who no longer can speak to tell their story for them.
Czesław Miłosz
Selfishness is easy to find. Selflessness is a much rarer beast.
Stewart Stafford
The older I get, the better I was.
Van Dyke Parks
God has already set the date [for judgment]. You may make and break appointments in this life, but this is one appointment you are going to keep.
Billy Graham
We tried to act familiar, which meant we couldn't ask the kind of questions that might have helped us figure each other out and year after year the distance grew.
Heidi Jon Schmidt
let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences
Sylvia Plath
When you love people, you want what's best for them, and sometimes what's best for them isn't you.
J.M. Darhower
He kissed me fiercely, with an utter abandon that I could no more put a halt to than I could stop an avalanche.
Colleen Houck
You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure-or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that's where you will find success.
Richard Paul Evans
It's best to have your tools with you. If you don't, you're apt to find something you didn't expect and get discouraged.
Stephen King
Obama will win. We will win. Then we will continue to lose. And the right questions will never be honestly asked or answered, and it's all just too much.
Kiese Laymon
You want to stab me again, don't you?"He didn't look at all ashamed. "Think of it as testing the limits of your new abilities."I groaned. "I've created a monster.""I don't think someone who recently crawled from the grave should be throwing around labels like 'monster,'" he said, making sarcastic little air-quotes fingers. "It wasn't a grave," I sniffed. "It was a comfy four-poster.
Molly Harper
All decisions are made on insufficient evidence.
Rita Mae Brown
Our difference are beautiful yet sometimes connection requires us to focus on our similarities, like the fact that we are all trying, all struggling, all wanting to be seen and to be loved. Perhaps if we start there, with this basic understanding of what it means to be alive, we will grow in our connection to one another and learn to love the beautiful difference that embody our improbable human reality.
Scott Stabile
I've changed my ways a little, I cannot nowRun with you in the evenings along the shore,Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,You see me there.
Robinson Jeffers
There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.
Ray Bradbury
The natural, proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
Ursula K Le Guin
To have to perform a scene, a punishment scene like that, was extremely unpleasant. It bothered me to hurt you, Jessica,” he growled. “You will let me hold you, and offer me some comfort in return.
Cherise Sinclair
He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.
Sherman Alexie
Expansion (both far and wide) is the order of the day
Sereda Aleta Dailey
Amory, sorry for them, was still not sorry for himself - art, politics, religion, whatever his medium should be, he knew he was safe now, free from all hysteria - he could accept what was acceptable, roam, grow, rebel, sleep deep through many nights...There was no God in his heart, he knew; his ideas were still in riot; there was ever the pain of memory; the regret for his lost youth - yet the waters of disillusion had left a deposit on his soul, responsibility and a love of life, the faint stirring of old ambitions and unrealized dreams...And he could not tell why the struggle was worth while, why he had determined to use to the utmost himself and his heritage from the personalities he had passed...He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky."I know myself," he cried, "but that is all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Do we miss out on love because we are working so hard? Or are we working so hard because we missed out on love?
Kate McGahan
The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Corporeal reality is much more rich and precious than we realize. It feels good to have a body, to surge on currents of emotion, to have nerve endings, mitochondria in our cells, tangible focused energy, the embodiment of light — given a voice.
Laurie Perez
They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.
Joseph J. Ellis
Taking my drink, I moved around the bar to her. Her smile was a little crooked as I sat down. I guessed it had been a wet night for platinum blondes.
Michael McCretton
The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
Abraham Verghese
But remember what I said about forgetting what I said?
Pseudonymous Bosch
It has long been my belief that everyone's library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal about its owner.
Anne Fadiman
In many instances, the failures of my greatest schemes ultimately lead to the fulfillment of my greatest successes. Therefore, God will allow our most cherished dreams to perish so that we might turn and seek out His most cherished plans.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Never had we ever kissed as lovers; if we touched lips it was as brother and sister. In one moment of emotion, our lips fell together by accident, but we quickly removed ourselves as though we were children touching glass with dirty hands.
Roman Payne
Write what you know. Write what you can't forget. Write to give yourself courage and others hope.
Nikki Rosen
In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
Mortimer J. Adler
It's a fruitless task, explaining yourself," he said. He was enjoying confessing the truth for once. "Either people get you, or they don't. In fact, even when they get you, it's always…a disappointment.
Alethea Black
His hand came out and captured her by the chin. She froze, finding it hard to breathe as he gently raised her face to meet his gaze.
Lia Davis
I like nonsense. It wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.
Dr. Seuss
Here, you drive," Erik said."What? Why?""In case we do have to start shooting; I have a badge and you don't," he explained."Fine. But for the record, I'm a better shot than you are.""For your information, I was the youngest kid awarded the rifle shooting merit badge in my troop," Erik said, holding the wheel as she climbed across him."Is that supposed to impress me?""Just enough to get you back into my bed." She took over the gas pedal and Erik slid out from underneath her."It takes more than fancy shooting," she said loftily, making a sharp turn.Erik was thrown against the door. "Would you warn me before you do that?""It's a car chase!
Tiffany Snow
Sometimes she sat and let her mind go blank and her eyes go out of focus, so that she watched the slow, jerky movements of the motes that floated across her pupils. They amazed her as a child. Now she saw them as a reflection of how she moved, floating listlessly through the world, occasionally bumping into another body without acknowledgment, and then floating on, free and alone.
Robert Goolrick
What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?
Sylvia Plath
Finding your purpose is a lifelong adventure. Enjoy the journey.
Todd Stocker
Even if we have grown so far apart that we don't recognize each other when we pass, we have this life, this block of time, and what do you think about that?
Jodi Picoult
I think the only choice that will enable us to hold to our vision is one that abandons the concept of naming enemies and adopts a concept familiar to the nonviolent tradition: naming behavior that is oppressive
Barbara Deming
Family drama is a trade off for having family.
C.C. Hunter
You're the brightest thing in the room," he said. He lifted his hand from my waist, and slowly, carefully brushed a stray lock of hair from my cheek. "You shine.
Morgan Matson
And no chick fucking either, unless we both agree to it, of course." Turner pauses and scowls. "Though I can't imagine sharing you with anyone. Makes me fucking sick to my stomach.
C.M. Stunich
It paid barely a living wage, but he stayed with it—gradually and in the end gratefully arriving at the point in life when you understand there are no great changes ahead.
Ann Packer
Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time everywhere
George W. Bush
I started to enjoy the regal sport of cockfighting... but I'm still having trouble getting the hang of windmilling the bayonet
Josh Stern
The stars were so many and so white they looked like chips of ice, hammered through the fabric of the sky.
Anthony Doerr
the automatic, fixed-action patterns of these animals work very well the great majority of the time. For example, because only healthy, normal turkey chicks make the peculiar sound of baby turkeys, it makes sense for mother turkeys to respond maternally to that single “cheep-cheep” noise.
Robert B. Cialdini
When someone says you can't do something because of XYZ, is that true? Or are they playing with your life with their good intentions to keep you safe?
Richie Norton
This is the world of pretend. We are artists and we are servants of the stage, and I take both jobs very seriously. As artists, we work as a collective—all for one and one for all. As servants, we work for thos who venture out alone, otherwise known as performers.
Rebecca Stead