Quotes by American Authors - Page 1974

So Janie waited a bloom time, and a green time and an orange time. But when the pollen again gilded the sun and sifted down on the world she began to stand around the gate and expect things. What things? She didn't know exactly. Her breath was gusty and short. She knew things that nobody had ever told her. For instance, the words of the trees and the wind. She often spoke to falling seeds and said, 'Ah hope you fall on soft ground,' because she had heard seeds saying that to each other as they passed. She knew the world was a stallion rolling in the blue pasture of ether. She knew that God tore down the old world every evening and built a new one by sun-up. It was wonderful to see it take form with the sun and emerge from the gray dust of its making. The familiar people and things had failed her so she hung over the gate and looked up the road towards way off. She knew now that marriage did not make love. Janie's first dream was dead, so she became a woman.
Zora Neale Hurston
When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? If you confront insult or antagonism, your first impulse will be to respond in kind. But if you think, as it were, This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate. You are free to act by your own lights. You are freed at the same time of the impulse to hate or resent that person.
Marilynne Robinson
You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.
C. JoyBell C.
Between any two beings there is a unique, uncrossable distance, an unenterable sanctuary. Sometimes it takes the shape of aloneness. Sometimes it takes the shape of love.
Jonathan Safran Foer
A great manager has a knack for making ballplayers think they are better than they think they are. He forces you to have a good opinion of yourself. He lets you know he believes in you. He makes you get more out of yourself. And once you learn how good you really are you never settle for playing anything less than your very best.
Reggie Jackson
I am not sure if we are numbed to the reality of rape, but here's the sad irony. While the word rape can add an edginess to your language, talking about actual rape is taboo. I didn't know this until one of my friends was raped. Then I knew this, because I didn't want to tell anyone. If she were mugged, I would have told everyone and raged.
Christine Stockton
Even the most political poem is an act of faith.
Martín Espada
The construction of masculinity and femininity was driven by the need to sell products.
Benita Roth
Think deeply about things. Don’t just go along because that’s the way things are or that’s what your friends say. Consider the effects, consider the alternatives, but most importantly, just think.
Aaron Swartz
Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further.
William Coperthwaite
Lydon Johnson realized he really was President, that his identity had changed by President Kennedy's shocking death, when aides who had been like family to him minutes before, stood in his presence on Air Force One.
Nancy Gibbs
The true way to live is to enjoy every moment as it passes, and surely it is in the everyday things around us that the beauty of life lies.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
A frenzy of activity that had mostly led him in circles: wasn't that a fairly accurate description of lust? At times Bennie didn't even mind its disappearance; it was sort of a relief not to be constantly wanting to fuck someone. The world was unquestionably a more peaceful place without the half hard-on that had been his constant companion since the age of thirteen, but did Bennie want to live in such a world?
Jennifer Egan
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
Frederick Douglass
For years, the church has emphasized evangelism, teaching, fellowship, missions, and service to society to the neglect of the very source of its power--worship.
Robert E. Webber
I can’t apologize for who I am any more. Even better, I have no desire to.
Scott Stabile
There were many, many times thereafter that Don regretted having enlisted - but so has every man who ever volunteered for military service.
Robert A. Heinlein
Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.
Annie Dillard
I used to think, that when my old inner demons started creeping back into my life, that it was a sign of failure or moral weakness. But the saints have shown me that part of the human condition is to struggle with the same sins and suffering over and over again. Once I accepted the fact that I’d probably always have to be on guard against spiritual attacks related to food and my weight, I began to really recover.
Kate Wicker
I am a follower of Jesus and a student of the Buddha. Why is that so hard for my fellow Christians to grasp?
David Paul Kirkpatrick
If you are asking me what the individual can do right now, in a political sense, I'd have to say he can't do all that much. Speaking for myself, I am more concerned with the transformation of the individual, which to me is much more important than the so-called political revolution.
William S Burroughs
Mutuality is accomplished by two whole persons; and if each partner truly intends to be but the fraction of a relationship (thinking my whole makes up half of us) he or she will soon discover that these halves do not fit perfectly together. The mathematics can work only if each subtracts something of himself or herself, shears it off, and lays it aside forever. There will come, then, a moment of shock when one spouse realizes, ‘you won’t want the whole of me? Not the whole of me, but only a part of me, makes up the whole of us?” P 45
Walter Wangerin Jr.
Whatever happened in those more than one hundred years, from the time my great-great-great grandfather studied law to the time when my own father took his bar exam in 1989, I may never know. Perhaps it was just greed and the good, old-fashion corruption that comes with power. The Drexlers have moved from the fight for human rights to the fight for corporations and wealthy individuals. We file their taxes, write their contracts, clean up their messes. As I see it, we have become little more than glorified Public Relations reps
Gwenn Wright
Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond who you were.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
Some of the greatest miracles one could ever receive in their life is the ones that happen when their faith and action has been applied.
Dionna L. Hayden
If you believe the Bible is true, you ought to know that demons are real. The Bible is filled with references of evil and demons, and Christ repeatedly cast out demons, so I believe the universe is much more complex and mysterious than it may appear to our senses.
D.L. Koontz
Jefferson determined the lodestar that lay hidden in the motivations of others
John Ferling
The woman who makes a sweet, beautiful home, filling it with love and prayer and purity, is doing something better than anything else her hands could find to do beneath the skies.
J.R. Miller
Accept that you are not finished, and a new and better life is just beginning.
Bryant McGill
You don’t say, “I’m sorry,”’ he says. ‘Getting injections, and experiencing pain, is part of life. There’s no reason to apologize for that.’ He seems to be channelling Rousseau, who said, ‘If by too much care you spare them every kind of discomfort, you are preparing great miseries for them.’ (I’m not sure what Rousseau thought about suppositories.)
Pamela Druckerman
If you don't leave room for the unexpected to express itself in your life, you close yourself off from the possibility of miracles.
Robert Stikmanz
Whoever thought a tiny candy bar should be called fun size was a moron.
Glenn Beck
Our weapons are the ironic mind against the literal: the open mind against the credulous; the courageous pursuit of truth against the fearful and abject forces who would set limits to investigation (and who stupidly claim that we already have all the truth we need). Perhaps above all, we affirm life over the cults of death and human sacrifice and are afraid, not of inevitable death, but rather of a human life that is cramped and distorted by the pathetic need to offer mindless adulation, or the dismal belief that the laws of nature respond to wailings and incantations.
Christopher Hitchens
[The public school system is] usually a twelve year sentence of mind control.Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism andcompromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting itinstead into meek subservience to authority.
Walter Karp
There's a reason that murderous hatred has to be taught--and not just taught, but forcibly implanted. It's not a naturally occurring phenomenon. It is a lie. It is a lie told over and over again--often to people who have no resources and who are denied alternative views of the world.
Zak Ebrahim
When people can't give anything and are only there for themselves, why should others use their time and energy to get involved? There's no benefit.
Susan C.Young
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong...For What It’s Worth
Stephen Stills
I have blogged previously about the dangerous and deadly effects of science denialism, from the innocent babies unnecessarily exposed to deadly diseases by other kids whose parents are anti-vaxxers, to the frequent examples of how acceptance of evolution helps us stop diseases and pests (and in the case of Baby Fae, rejection of evolution was fatal), to the long-term effects of climate denial to the future of the planet we all depend upon. But one of the strangest forms of denialism is the weird coalition of people who refuse to accept the medical fact that the HIV virus causes AIDS. What the heck? Didn’t we resolve this issue in the 1980s when the AIDS condition first became epidemic and the HIV virus was discovered and linked to AIDS? Yes, we did—but for people who want to deny scientific reality, it doesn’t matter how many studies have been done, or how strong the scientific consensus is. There are a significant number of people out there (especially among countries and communities with high rates of AIDS infections) that refuse to accept medical reality. I described all of these at greater length in my new book Reality Check: How Science Deniers Threaten our Future.
Donald R. Prothero
A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart,But at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion.
Charlyn Khater
There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
Laurie Halse Anderson
I can barely breathe. I feel like I’m going to explode. Jake Wilder is kissing me. French-kissing me. Is he even supposed to be French-kissing me for the play? I thought… Oh, who cares if he’s supposed to or not. He is, that’s all that matters.
Mari Mancusi
I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.
Courtney Milan
One of the most important things one can do in life is to brutally question every single thing you are taught.
Bryant McGill
And this is when I knew I was black for real.This is when I knew black was a citywhose walls were constantly under siege....
Roger Bonair-Agard
I know the rules. I've been living here longer than you have."He cracks a smile then. He nudges me back. "Hardly.""Born and raised. You're a transplant." I nudge him again, a little harder, and he laughs and tries to catch hold of my arm. I squirm away, giggling, and he stretches out to tickle my stomach. "Country bumpkin!" I squeal, as he grabs out and wrestles me back onto the blanket, laughing."City slicker," he says, rolling over on top of me, and then kisses me. Everything dissolves: heat, explosions of color, floating.
Lauren Oliver
Why are you asking me? I'm seventeen and don't know anything about what to do when you're autistic and gay.
Claire LaZebnik
Innovation is a question of ambition, and imagination, not a question of investment only.
Pearl Zhu
No one can tell the difference between a clone and a human. That's because there isn't any difference. The idea of clones being inferior is a filthy lie.
Nancy Farmer
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.
Ernest Hemingway
Progress has a steep price. Success has an even steeper price. Your team won't be willing to pay it if you aren't willing to pay it.
T Jay Taylor
I don’t have to convince anyone that I love you.
Dominique Eastwick
Murderers don't get forgiven just because we promise to be good from now on. We have to earn our way back. One hundred is the price. One hundred lives for each we took. That seems fair. That's how we get whole again and that's our work, from now until as long as it takes.
Bill Willingham
Stop talking," she said boldly as she closed the distance between them until they were touching. "We can walk to the bedroom or you can carry me but if you don't decide soon I may just go insane.
Samantha Chase
I am the son of Hades. I go where I wish. The darkness is my birthright.
Rick Riordan
Now you know how badly someone wanted you, Charley. Children forget that sometimes. They think of themselves as a burden instead of a wish granted.
Mitch Albom
The men who are dropped in a jungle or a desert and expected video games and got mundanity and depravity and friends dying like animals.
Dave Eggers
A steady flame unwavering & honest
Cassandra Clare
If this was what caring about someone was like, what the hell was he supposed to do? Because he couldn’t handle it, couldn’t live like this.
Kelly Moran
Maybe some things aren't meant to be known. maybe there just meant to be accepted.
Wendy Mass
It wasn't every day that a lion shifter next in line to the throne, dealing with a possible uproar and war in his Pride, found himself a soon-to-be father with a not-so-human potential mate after he'd left her all alone because he'd been forced to hurt her. There weren't any manuals for this sort of thing....
Carrie Ann Ryan