Quotes by American Authors - Page 2026

More history's made by secret handshakes than by battles bills and proclamations.
John Barth
I thought my duty was to restore Haan, but Haan is not King Cosugi or the burned-down palace or the ruins of the great estates or the dead nobles and their descendants pining for glory-these are but parts of an experiment at a way of life for the people of Haan, her true essence. When the experiment has proven to be a failure, one must be willing to try new paths, new ways of doing things.
Ken Liu
You are set free whenever you love—even those who believe you're crazy.
Jef Murray
In the spring of 1990 I flew to Aspen, Colorado, to cover a summit meeting between Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President George Herbert Walker Bush. This fairly routine political event took on sudden significance when, on the evening before the talks were scheduled to begin, Saddam Hussein announced that the independent state of Kuwait had, by virtue of a massive deployment of military force, become a part of Iraq. We were not to know that this act—and the name Saddam Hussein—would dominate international politics for the next decade and more, but it was still possible to witness something extraordinary: the sight of Mrs. Thatcher publicly inserting quantities of lead into George Bush’s pencil. The spattering quill of a Ralph Steadman would be necessary to do justice to such a macabre yet impressive scene.
Christopher Hitchens
Some people are hard to forget, but some people are hard to remember.
Phil Volatile
Twenty years ago, chaos theory was all the rage. I wonder what happened with that. Maybe all the excitement over it become so organized that its initial entropy failed to fall apart and disintegrate into nothingness leaving its proponents re-illusioned in certainty. I remember seeing an employee at a local book store arranging a subsection for literature about chaos among the science books. "There’s the problem." I thought. "How can there be a chaos section? Those books should be distributed randomly throughout the store... that is, if there was any real disorder to things.
Alex Bosworth
Reading words puts them in your mind. You never forget. Even when you don't get a chance to dwell on the music, you can hear it in your head.
Carolyn Davidson
Fear and pain should be treated as signals not to close our eyes but to open them wider.
Nathaniel Branden
If I feel the urge to burst into flames, I'll let you know," Simon was getting fed up. "Look, did you actually ask me to come all the way uptown just so you could stare at me like I'm something in a petrie dish? Next time I'll send you a photo.""And I'll frame it and put it on my nightstand," Jace said, but he didn't sound as if his heart was in the sarcasm. "Look, I asked you here for a reason, not to stare at you. Much as I hate to admit it, vampire, we have something in common.""Totally awesome hair?" Simon suggested
Cassandra Clare
I wanted to live. For the father and brother who I never knew and for my mother who was cheated of a life of happiness. I wanted to live for them. And I wanted to live for me.
Abbi Glines
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of man will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
Alexander Hamilton
The best thing about coming out is, it's totally liberating. You feel like you've made this incredible discovery about yourself and you want to share it and be open and honest and not spend all your time wondering how is this person going to react, or should I be careful around this person, or what will the neighbors say? And it's more. It's about getting past the question of what's wrong with me, to knowing there's nothing wrong, that you were born this way. You're a normal person and a beautiful person and you should be proud of who you are. You deserve to live with dignity and show people your pride.
Julie Anne Peters
...When we quietly go about our business as our rights are plundered, when we yield to passivity and switch on the wii and hand over our power, we are not acting like true Americans. Indeed, at those moments we are giving up our citizenship.
Naomi Wolf
19. Those who are the happiest are not necessarily those for whom life has been easiest. Emotional stability results from an attitude. It is refusing to yield to depression and fear, even when black clouds float overhead. It is improving that which can be improved and accepting that which is inevitable.
James C. Dobson
There will be no enemy if you try to kill him with the power of your love.
Debasish Mridha
I wouldn't have cared if my girlfriend was a Jaguar-driving Cyclops with a beard - I'd have been grateful just to have someone to make out with.
John Green
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law
Douglas R. Hofstadter
There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)
Stephen Levine
A common and natural result of an undue respect of law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.
Henry David Thoreau
Strange clothes you wear, Child of the Dragon. Has the Wheel turned so far? Do the People of the Dragon return to the first Covenant? But you wear a sword. That is neither now nor then.
Robert Jordan
Intentions are ambitious liars.
Jon Acuff
Will was dead, but Missouri Ann was going to have a baby. Birth and death were God's way, she told herself. Joy and sorrow were joined together.
Sandra Dallas
I admire a contented mind. I revere enjoyment of the simple things. I can imagine that contentment has a high degree of truth. But the human tendency is to take good as normal, and one's natural right, and so no cause for satisfaction and pleasure. This is accompanied by the habit of regarding bad as abnormal and a personal outrage.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
I can't say I have any confidence in confidence. I have confidence that God is with us in all things, both tender and tough.
Jan Karon
If you are kind enough today, history will sing your song and be kind to you.
Debasish Mridha
There is no feature as attractive as a well exercised intellect.
Lois Greiman
There is strength in numbers, yes, but even more so in collective good will. For those endeavors are supported by mighty forces unseen.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The real tragedy of life is not the fear of darkness, but it is to conform and follow the darkness in spite of fear.
Debasish Mridha
It is a well known fact that even among highly cultured peoples the belief in animism prevails generally. Even the scholar may kick the chair against which he accidentally stumbles, and derive great satisfaction from thus 'getting even' with the perverse chair.
Holly Estil Cunningham
Only you could be more important than what I wanted...what I needed. What I want and what I need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again.
Stephenie Meyer
Many people engage in physical relationships without ever experiencing intimacy
DeBorrah K. Ogans
So really…what is war? A senseless battle between men's inflated ego.
Kathy McClary
A lot of things in the house were broken or forgotten: the kitchen clock stopped, a closet doorknob coming off in my hand. The sparkly mess of flies I'd swept from the corners. It took sustained, constant living to ward off decay.
Emma Cline
There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
Joseph Heller
Women most often experience shame as a web of layered, conflicting, and competing social-community expectations. The expectations dictate who we should be, what we should be, how we should be.
Brené Brown
The Only Way to Do Great Work is To Love What You Do
Steve Jobs
I'd also learned something new. There was something really sexy about a man that kissed you, without stopping to ask first.
Rose Wynters
The one who makes the idols never worships them, however tenderly he might have molded the clay. You cannot have knowledge and worship at the same time. Mystery is the essence of divinity. Gods must keep their distances from men.
Zora Neale Hurston
We’re going down to the Margarita Grill to smell the lobster, then we’re going to watch the sunrise, and in between we’ll probably have hot, unsafe animal sex.
Darynda Jones
Afraid of a wooden sword?""Just demonstrating my skills in evading an attack. Impressed?
Jennifer A. Nielsen
Every thing—every atom is conscious. To find it we have to open our eyes and see with a higher consciousness.
Debasish Mridha
Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.
Meg Wolitzer
I was Ashallayn’darkmyr Tallyn, son of Mab, former prince of the Unseelie Court, and I was not afraid of a witch on a broom.
Julie Kagawa
... science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not.
David Brin
You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance, Germany doesn't want to go to war, and the three most powerful men in America are named "Bush", "Dick", and "Colin." Need I say more?
Chris Rock
I don't want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it.
Marty Rubin
People reject what they do not understand because it makes them feel small. They would rather believe in some other reality, even if it is only an illusion, so long as it makes them feel bigger.
Suzy Kassem
Then what is good? The obsessive interest in human affairs, plus a certain amount of compassion and moral conviction, that first made the experience of living something that must be translated into pigment or music or bodily movement or poetry or prose or anything that's dynamic and expressivee--that's what's good for you if you're at all serious in your aims. William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. "In the time of your life--live!" That time is short and it doesn't return again. It is slipping away while I write this and while you read it, the monosyllable of the clock is Loss, loss, loss, unless you devote your heart to its opposition.
Tennessee Williams
Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered. Face it – pitiful monster.
Tennessee Williams
What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it.
James C. Dobson
A little man in a threadbare coat spoke up for the poor as if he really knew what he was talking about. The women with the flowers threw them down for him. “That’s Robert Speer,” one said. “Something like that. He’s our man.
Marge Piercy
Bolivian women sewed their lips shut for days. They threaded needles through their skin to stop their speech, to show what good speaking had done them.
Leslie Jamison
Behavior slays the dragon of illusion and reveals the truth.
Steve Maraboli
Our minds of infinite possibilities have been plowed, seeded and cultivated by every word, institution and sacred belief we hold dear, to produce a foul harvest of exclusion, apathy, brute domination and death.
Bryant McGill
People have always expected the end of the world to be a dramatic, thematic event: war, disease, a sudden explosion. But what if the end of the world has already occurred? What if our final demise happened slowly, secretly … and we’ve been oblivious to it all?
Caroline George
You can't show me the Earth from space and fly right past the moon, entice me into this magical machine and invite me to come with you, and then ask me to stay behind!
Elizabeth Newton
Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
Mary Catherine Bateson
When a confident woman allows you to take over the care of her, you’re both elevated to a higher level.
Brownell Landrum
She gave him a strange maternal grin.For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Paul Sheldon’s mind: I am introuble here. This woman is not right.
Stephen King
What might happen if we could somehow reorient ourselves toward our more loving, bonobo side rather than our inner mad chimpanzee?
Susan Block