Quotes by American Authors - Page 1957

If you have a good idea, use it so that you will not only accomplish something, but so that you can make room for new ones to flow into you.
Ming-Dao Deng
Life is worth living to reveal the beauties of life.
Debasish Mridha
Mystique saturates, gluts the air,Adventure’s even more than rare,Excitement’s everywhere to share,And Novelty’s beyond compare.
Mariecor Ruediger
We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.
Catherynne M. Valente
So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try and feel okay about them.
Stephen Chbosky
The heart, once broken, stayed broken.
Justin Cronin
Control what you can, but flow with what you can’t.
Alan Cohen
Where the Divine and the Human Meet" shows how important it is to meet the world with the creativity of an artist, particularly in these uncertain times: "What do we do with chaos? Creativity has an answer. We are told by those who have studied the processes of nature that creativity happens at the border between chaos and order. Chaos is a prelude to creativity. We need to learn, as every artist needs to learn, to live with chaos and indeed to dance with it as we listen to it and attempt some ordering. Artists wrestle with chaos, take it apart, deconstruct and reconstruct from it. Accept the challenge to convert chaos into some kind of order, respecting the timing of it all, not pushing beyond what is possible—combining holy patience with holy impatience--that is the role of the artist. It is each of our roles as we launch the twenty-first century because we are all called to be artists in our own way. We were all artists as children. We need to study the chaos around us in order to turn it into something beautiful. Something sustainable. Something that remains".
Matthew Fox
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
W.C.Fields
Her killer wrote a note on that stationary.""A note." Now Renquist's eyebrows lifted. "Well. That was rather arrogant of him, wasn't it?
J D ROBB
The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?
John Hersey
See the light of beauty and love,See the magnificence of life,Enjoy the charm and mystery of creation,Enjoy the little beauty around you,Appreciate every little thing, every little love and the blue sky above you.
Debasish Mridha
To love what you do and feel that it matters-how could anything be more fun?
Katherine Graham
If I could be half the person my dog is, I'd be twice the human I am.
Charles Yu
There is another way to think about conversation, one that is less about information and more about creating a space to be explored. You are interested in hearing about how another person approaches things—her or her opinions and associations. In this kind of conversation—I think of it as 'whole person conversation'—if things go quiet for a while you look deeper, you don't look away or text a friend. You try to read your friends in a different way. Perhaps you look into their faces or attend to their body language. Or you allow for silence. Perhaps when we talk about 'conversations' being boring, such a frequent complaint, we are saying how uncomfortable we are with stillness.
Sherry Turkle
Music is exciting and easy to enjoy, the rhythm and voice.It does not need interpretation. That is why it is called the Universal Language.
Ellen J. Barrier
Quote taken from Chapter 1:"Alma idly wondered if he'd blow his nose, too.He did. Twice. He made it honk, the sound reminding Alma of Harpo Marx squeezing his bulb horn.Isabel darted a look at Alma, giving her the don’t-you-dare-giggle squint.Alma dug her fingernails into her palm, the inappropriate laugh rising from her throat as she looked up at the ceiling. Blue refolded his handkerchief and returned it to inside his seersucker jacket. Thankfully, Alma’s urge to laugh subsided.
Ed Lynskey
Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all bored, or threatened, or tantalized in differing degrees by a perilous world, some hostile people, and a not very sensitive government.
Carl Cohen
Honor lies in honest toil.
Grover Cleveland
It is our duty and our joy to communicate our hearts to each other. Words assist us in this task.
Kate DiCamillo
From my writer's workshop, "Know when it's time to put everything you've got on the page. Then, rip open a vein and do it!
Heather Burch
The myth that if you don't start early, you might as well not start, tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The music-making world that young people confront reminds me a lot of the world of school sports. After a lot of weeding out, in the end you've got a varsity with a few performers and an awful lot of people on the sidelines thinking, "Gee, it's too bad I wasn't good enough." We need to be careful about that. There seems to be an unspoken idea, in instruction of the young, that the people who start the fastest will go the farthest. But that's not only an unproven theory; it's not even a tested theory. The assumption that the steeper the learning curve, the higher it will go, is also unfounded. If we did things a little differently, we might find out that people whose learning curves were much slower might later on go up just as high or higher.
John Holt
Don’t listen to the ramblings of fools,” he said, smiling grimly. “When it comes down to it, if they knew the truth, no one would want to live on this earth forever.
Melika Dannese Lux
I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.
Joan Didion
The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.
Frances E. Willard
When William Johnson and slave walked down that long, winding American road toward freedom and justice, they didn't realize they would be speaking out for all those left behind. They learned that it would take hard work to make the words of the Declaration of Independence mean what they said. Ellen and William Craft were willing to do their part.
Joy Hakim
Let’s not get started on their uniforms. Superman’s stretchy spandex has nothing on Batman’s sculpted pecs.”He glared at her. “You cannot bring fashion sense into a superhero discussion!”“If they wear it, it’s fair game.” She folded her arms on the table.
Alisha Rai
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury
Make project plan as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Gerry Geek
For example, if you think you are a certain way as a person and that is just who you are and you don't have the power to change, that will become true for you. Whatever image, thoughts or words you continuously play in your conscious mind, your soul (subconscious) will believe. So think the best. Suggest the best.
Machel Shull
Within each of us there is an Owl, a Rabbit, an Eeyore, and a Pooh. For too long, we have chosen the way of Owl and Rabbit. Now, like Eeyore, we complain about the results. But that accomplishes nothing. If we are smart, we will choose the way of Pooh. As if from far away, it calls to us with the voice of a child's mind. It may be hard to hear at times, but it is important just the same, because without it, we will never find our way through the forest.
Benjamin Hoff
Handle your tools without mittens.
Benjamin Franklin
A few years after working on Mauna Kea, I discovered that I had radiation sickness
Steven Magee
Raven, holding Joshua's chin, asks him how old he is.Joshua, folding in the pinky and the thumb on his left hand, while leaning on Raven's legs, raises three middle fingers into the air."That's what I thought. You're three.
Giorge Leedy
This world ye speak of, Akira, is built upon survival. The strong conquer and live, while the weak crumble and die.
Jennifer Hudson Taylor
Any clock that can track this sideral schedule proves itself as perfect as God's magnificent clockwork.Dava Sobel
Dava Sobel
Gossip, slander and jealousy have caused more pain than many wars.
Heather Wolf
Listening is one thing; however, ACTIVE listening is quite another. The first is a passive act which does not require great involvement, whereas, the latter is a consciously aware and deliberately focused effort to actively participate in the conversation.
Susan C.Young
You sing?” she asked.t“Mostly in the shower.”t“Then I should’ve had my ear to the bathroom door when you were in there.”tHe pinched the beads at the end of the tie on her blouse, and rolled them between his fingertips. “You should’ve been in there with me.
Tracy March
I think we do need a Constitutional amendment to take the profit out of politics by imposing term limits.
Kenneth Eade
The support of one's personality is friends. A part of one's self and a real foundation and existence.
Katharine Butler Hathaway
We've eaten, but he looks hungry, and experience tells me that crazy takes a lot of calories to sustain.
Emil Ostrovski
September felt panic burn through her like gasoline. Why couldn't he understand her? "But I didn't [choose]! I have hardly had a chance to breathe since I got here and it's always like that in Fairyland. Everything is always happening and all at once. And I am growing up, Saturday! I am growing up and I have read books, so many books, and I know that growing up means you can't keep going to Fairyland the way you did when you were a child! Something happens to you and suddenly you have to keep a straight face and a straight line and I am afraid! I want something grand and I don't want to know what it is before it happens!
Catherynne M. Valente
A commune of library employees in Moscow created an "extreme" commune in which all clothing - including undergarments - was collectivized. According to Mehnert, if a communard preferred to wear his or her own underclothes "it would be characterized as a backslide into darkest capitalism; as prejudice originating in a petit-bourgeois ideology".
Richard Stites
How ’bout you take this Cajun injector here,” I say, gripping the steel rod in his shorts, “and give me a shot of protein instead.
Heather M. Orgeron
[We're] going to change the world. One day they'll write about us. You'll see.
Viola Gregg Liuzzo
We become what we behold.
Matt Chandler
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
Charles Bukowski
She was Black before it was fashionable to be Black.
Gil Scot-Herron
In a world of insanity, nothing is sacred. It's an insane world, nothing is sacred.
Deb Caletti
The parched soil of fear needs steady rain.
Max Lucado
Phones are only good for ordering pizza and telling someone you're running late
Amy Reed
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
James Madison
I sprayed my dog with off and he still sits in my favorite chair!!
Neil Leckman
Something like another wave of despair crashes into me. "I'm so heavy." I blink and a tear slides down my cheek."Then you lean on us for a while. Let us carry you, Joy, until you're not heavy anymore. That's what family is.
Jolene Perry
There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.
Robin Sloan
Every time we draw a line between us and others, Jesus is always on the other side of it.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Who worries for dying? If I close my eyes tonight, I will either dream, or not, or my eyes will open and I will be here again. And if none of those happen, and I do not wake? Who worries for dying?
Roman Payne
Gordon Van Wylen, Chairman of the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan commented that, “The question that arises is how the universe got into the state of reduced entropy in the first place, since all natural processes known to us tend to increase entropy?” (Gordon Van Wylen and Richard Edwin Sonntag, Fundamentals of Classical Thermodynamics, 1973). He concludes by saying, “The author has found that the second law [of thermodynamics] tends to increase conviction that there is a Creator.
Gordon J. Van Wylen
..the thing about depression. When I feel it deeply, I don’t want to let it go. Itbecomes a comfort. I want to cloak myself under its heavy weight and breathe it into my lungs. I wantto nurture it, grow it, cultivate it. It’s mine. I want to check out with it, drift asleep wrapped in itsarms and not wake up for a long, long time.
Stephanie Perkins