Quotes by American Authors - Page 2092

Because we’ve been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It’s ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you’re supposed to believe in’s really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it’s a good bet you remember ‘No new taxes’ and ‘Out of the loop’ and ‘No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time’ and Did not inhale’ and ‘Did not have sex with that woman’ and etc. etc. It’s depressing and painful to believe that the would-be ‘public servants’ you’re forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you’re an idiot. So who wouldn’t fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect?
David Foster Wallace
She didn’t know that my heart was a sandstorm waiting to open her skin in a desert of cuts. She didn’t know the animal that waited in my stomach, silently shredding the walls. For her, my heart wore small white shoes and carried a purse, went to bed early. I wanted to shoot myself into her arms so she understood the need to crash cars with me, to tear up pavement because we were beautiful.
Michelle Tea
I never want to regret. 'Regret' is the ugliest word.
Peter Hedges
One good song with a message can bring a point more deeply to more people than a thousand rallies.
Phil Ochs
A tree can be tempted out of its winter dormancy by a few hours of southerly sun—the readiness to believe in spring is stronger than sleep or sanity.
Amy Leach
To understand another human being you must gain some insight into the conditions which made him what he is.
Margaret Bourke-White
No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.
Stephen King
But I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.
Gloria Naylor
Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.
Marilynne Robinson
Are you the sum total of your worst acts?
Bryan Stevenson
It wasn’t because you weren’t beautiful, talented, funny, creative or had everything in common. It was because some men prefer plain vanilla ice cream. It’s predictable and a safe choice. Confident and adventurous men prefer the complexity and layers of a sundae, even the ones sprinkled with a little bit of nuts on top.
Shannon L. Alder
Ambition is putting a ladder against the sky.
Shannon L. Alder
Sometimes, all it takes is your smile (even if forced) & a domino effect of smiles happen ... infectious.
Ace Antonio Hall
Man's loneliness is but his fear of life.
Eugene O'Neill
You are never lost in sorrow, it seems to me, ever. You do know the way. In fact, you don't think there's any other. Sorrow seemed to me to be more like a road would through life, through the days of your life, like the old Roman ruins near the Tuileries or the rue d'Enfer -- underneath this life, but never really apart from it.
Alexander Chee
Lord above, was there a better sight than a woman flush with passion, her skin dewy and pink, her breasts bouncing from the force of his thrusts?
Kristen Callihan
Your highest purpose and calling is often really calling for your own healing
Bryant McGill
Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language.
Adrienne Rich
The trait I regard most highly in a man is kindness. Thoughtful, consistent kindness. All other qualities—whether charming, witty, handsome, enterprising, powerful, seductive, or ingenious—wither in comparison to a truly kind man.
Richelle E. Goodrich
But how will I know it's my destiny?' 'Like love it will possess you... You can't help but know.
Gail Tsukiyama
We don't like to admit it, but the idea of losing control is one that fascinates controlled people such as ourselves more than almost anything. All truly civilized people – the ancients no less than us – have civilized themselves through the wilful repression of the old, animal self.
Donna Tartt
We make our purpose.
Carl Sagan
Trauma is hell on earth. Trauma resolved is a gift from the gods.
Peter A. Levine
Find yourself, who are you?Choose yourself, who can you be?Define yourself to find your destination.
Debasish Mridha
No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.
Edward R. Murrow
There are two types of people in this world: those whose look for opportunity and those who make it happen.
Jay Samit
The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.
Thomas Szasz
Your heart is like the ocean, mysterious and dark.
Bob Dylan
the much-sought prize of eternal youthIs just arrested growth.
Edgar Lee Masters
I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it.
Jodi Picoult
Segregation in the American South was bankrolled by the wealthy eugenicist from the Northeast, Wickliffe Draper.
A.E. Samaan
Faith is a process in action. It cannot exist without work.
Ellen J. Barrier
Keep your relationship private but don't hide the fact you're in one.
Genereux Philip
Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.
Anthony Robbins
The dark prince sat astride his black steed, his sable cape flowing behind him. A golden circlet bound his blond locks, his handsome face was cold with the rage of battle, and..."And his arm looked like an eggplant," Clary muttered to herself in exasperation.
Cassandra Clare
The captain put his fingers to his temples as if he had a headache. “So, let me get this straight. Edgar, an immortal, who I assume is as unscrupulous as his sisters, tried to take that bracelet from you
Richelle E. Goodrich
Of course it would be hard. But I remembered what my nurseryman grandfather used to say when I didn’t want to go to school: half the work in the world was done by people who didn’t feel so good today.
Rollo Romig
As it happens I am comfortable with the Michael Laskis of this world, with those who live outside rather than in, those in whom the sense of dread is so acute that they turn to extreme and doomed commitments; I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people manage to fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History. But of course I did not mention dread to Michael Laski, whose particular opiate is History. I did suggest “depression,” did venture that it might have been “depressing” for him to see only a dozen or so faces at his last May Day demonstration, but he told me that depression was an impediment to the revolutionary process, a disease afflicting only those who do not have ideology to sustain them.
Joan Didion
One may prefer spring and summer to autumn and winter, but preference is hardly to the point. The earth turns, and we live in the grain of nature, turning with it.
Robert Hass
Children should be able to live a life free from electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure and radio frequency (RF) radiation pollution and it is time that we all took a stand against this.
Steven Magee
A magical universe was so terrifying because it was so irrational. There was no cause and effect anywhere.
Edith Hamilton
The first and second commandments are the only therapy the world has ever needed. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” [Matthew 22:37, 39 KJV].
Billy Graham
You cannot study the same day of a test, and expect to do your very best.
Charmaine J.Forde
As I would not be a slave so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Abraham Lincoln
If you want to be seen, stand up.If you want to be heard, speak up.If you want to be appreciated, shut up.
Bill Cosby
Well, everybody does it that way, Huck.""Tom, I am not everybody.
Mark Twain
It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
Logan Pearsall Smith
I know supposedly God has anger, vengeance, and wrath, and if he doesn’t have a sense of humor I’m in big trouble!
Stanley Victor Paskavich
The plain fact is that education is itself a form of propaganda - a deliberate scheme to outfit the pupil, not with the capacity to weigh ideas, but with a simple appetite for gulping ideas ready-made. The aim is to make 'good' citizens, which is to say, docile and uninquisitive citizens.
H.L. Mencken
The most beautiful place in the world, is anyplace. Anyplace you can hold your head up. Anyplace you can be proud of who you are. But I though, where you love somebody a whole lot, and you know that person loves you, that's the most beautiful place in the world.
Ann Cameron
Without realizing it, I fought to keep my two worlds separated. Without ever knowing why, I made sure, whenever possible that nothing passed between the compartmentalization I had created between the day child and the night child.p26
Marilyn Van Derbur
[W]hen one has a religious experience, what is 'true' is only that one has had that experience, not that its contents convey anything about reality. To determine that, one needs a way to verify the contents of a revelation, and that means science.
Jerry A. Coyne
Jealousy from a love affair is something even God can admit.
Criss Jami
For years I’ve been trying to turn myself into someone I’m not. Because that’s what Court wanted. But you get me. I can be the man I want to be with you—the man I’m meant to be. You needed me to be that man. I’m a cop. Always have been, always will be.
Julie Miller
Then, the massive hands lifted the new people up to a pair of giant indescribable lips and whispered, in a fundamentally untranslatable Creator-language, something that meant, approximately: THIS TIME, BE KIND TO ONE ANOTHER. REMEMBER: EACH OF YOU WANTS TO BE HAPPY. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU WANTS TO LIVE FREE FROM FEAR. AND I WANT YOU TO. EACH OF YOU ARE SECRETLY AFRAID YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH. BUT YOU ARE, TRUST ME, YOU ARE.
George Saunders
Dogmatism of all kinds--scientific, economic, moral, as well as political--are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. This is necessarily and inevitably so. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyer of our nicely ordered systems. (p. 76)
Rollo May
INTENSE SEXUAL DESIRE IS THE GREATEST THING IN THE WORLDJaney dreams of cocks. Janey sees cocks instead of objects. Janey has to fuck.This is the way Sex drives Janey crazy: Before Janey fucks, she keeps her wants in cells. As soon as Janey's fucking she wants to be adored as much as possible at the same time as, its other extreme, ignored as much as possible. More than this: Janey can no longer perceive herself wanting. Janey is Want.It's worse than this: If Janey gets sexually rejected her body becomes sick. If she doesn't get who she wants she naturally revolts.
Kathy Acker
There it was again, that strange sensation. Sort of floaty. Completely lovely. “Why aren’t we kissing yet?”“The same question had crossed my mind.” He leaned closer and pressed his lips to mine.I could never get enough of this sweet, crazy kissing. How did anyone ever get anything done when they were falling in love?
Elizabeth Langston
Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community.
Walter Kaufmann
The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.
Elizabeth Gilbert