Quotes by American Authors - Page 2163

Your thorns are the best part of you.
Marianne Moore
I have not been able to discover whether there exists a precise French equivalent for the common Anglo-American expression 'killing time.' It's a very crass and breezy expression, when you ponder it for a moment, considering that time, after all, is killing us.
Christopher Hitchens
As I witness and participate in our visionary efforts to revitalize Detroit and contrast them with the multibillion dollars' worth of megaprojects advanced by politicians and developed that involve casinos, giant stadiums, gentrification, and the Super Bowl, I am saddened by their shortsightedness. At the same time I rejoice in the energy being unleashed in the community by our human-scale programs that involve bringing the country back into the city and removing the walls between schools and communities, between generations, and between ethnic groups. And I am confident just as in the early twentieth century people came from around the world to marvel at the mass production lines pioneered by Henry Ford, in the twenty-first century they will be coming to marvel at the thriving neighborhoods that are the fruit of our visionary programs.
Grace Lee Boggs
Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. First, the subjects of deepest dread (corruption, decay, pollution, anomie, weakness) are identified with the disease. The disease itself becomes a metaphor. Then, in the name of the disease (that is, using it as a metaphor), that horror is imposed on other things. The disease becomes adjectival. Something is said to be disease-like, meaning that it is disgusting or ugly.
Susan Sontag
The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.
Roman Payne
He told her, I don't remember any other lover but you.tI don't believe you.tI don't. I know the facts of other lovers, but all the real, visceral memory, or any emotion has burned away. Those lovers happened to someone else, the man I was before I met you.
Thea Harrison
She was beautiful, only hers was the dark beauty of night, just as Sherry's was the bright beauty of daytime. Her hair was raven-black, ending in a sort of widow's peak low on her forehead, and her face and arms were alabaster- white. Her gown was a clinging thing of swirling black, almost like smoke, and two peculiar shoulder-draperies she wore, hanging down loosely and caught at the wrists, almost suggested great triangular wings when her arms were in motion.Her lips were a red gash in the pallor of her face, and they glistened as though she had daubed them with fresh blood instead of rouge."What's your name?" I asked."Call me Faustine," she said low. I saw her staring fixedly at me, with a sort of half-smile on her face, but her gaze rested a little lower than my own face. I fingered my neck uneasily. "Is there something on my collar?"("Vampire's Honeymoon")
Cornell Woolrich
At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.
Brennan Manning
The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight But they while their companions slept Were toiling upward in the night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
She is the weakness you think of as strength while I am the strength you have no idea is there.
David Levithan
Everything gets better with milk.
Debasish Mridha
The truth is -- we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable.
Steve Goodier
I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.
Shirley Jackson
I wanted to come close to fierce wild things. They seemed prehistoric, rare and sacred.
Aspen Matis
Others can make us vulnerable and the sooner such vulnerabilities are dealt with the better
Ron Rash
You can't break the broken.
Margarete Cassalina
When death is the ultimate destination for all of us, why are we not enjoying our lives?
Debasish Mridha
My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday?
Laurie Halse Anderson
Be more concerned with character than reputation. Character is what you are, reputation is what people think you are.
John Wooden
Nothing stayed, nothing ever changed. But love, only love, that was the true part of the story, no matter what the beginning, middle or end.
Selena Kitt
Because I am for them, Commander, because their ancestors stood up to that Nazi, Bligh, just like I would be for one little Jew, terrified and hungry, crossing the Pyrenees to get away to freedom from the Gestapo. One little Jew. You wouldn't have him in your house. He stinks, he has lice. But, you know what, Commander? I am for him, every time.” And he would punch me in the shoulder and lug his M-1 up onto the ridge, night after night.
James A. Michener
You can’t hold it in forever,” Colton said, apropos of nothing. “Yes, I can.” I had to. “You’ll go crazy. It’ll come out, one way or another.” “Better crazy than broken.” I wasn't sure where that came from, hadn't thought it or meant to say it. “You’re not broken. You’re hurting.
Jasinda Wilder
Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.
Andy Warhol
Most plagiarists like the drone have neither taste to select industry to acquire nor skill to improve but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive.
Walter Colton
Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means. Most of the old androcratic values and delusional assumptions remain intact.
Walter Wink
By prolonged and continued fellowship, the sheep who follow nearby enjoy the shepherd's presence and become his familiar companions. To those closest to him, he shares the choicest portions of the food he's gathered. These happy and content sheep are never in danger. Why? Because they are near the shepherd!
Elizabeth George
I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first a little and badly. Then bit by bit more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.
Audre Lorde
And God does have a personality. He can't hide from us. His personality shines through every Hebrew letter, on every page. Sometimes we forget that God is a person--not a fleshly person, but a person nonetheless. (page iii)
Michael Ben Zehabe
You can’t do it for someone else. No matter how much they motivate or inspire you, you have to do it for yourself. Your health is YOUR responsibility.
Toni Sorenson
Take it easy, Jewels, Sebastian said, trying to sound playful, but worry was written all over his face. "Why can't you ever call me by my real name?" "Well, at least I know you're coherent- you're back to asking your heap of questions."' Concealed
Sang Kromah
There is so much you don't know about a person. I wonder if I could've made her days a little bit easier, if I'd tried. If I'd treated her a little nicer. Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.
Kathyrn Stockett
The law of karma is like the wind—blowing on all. Whether you are good or evil, bright or dim, kind or unkind, there is no escaping the effects of your thoughts and the actions that arise from those thoughts. In fact, the onlydifference between the wise and the ignorant is that an illuminated mind erects windmills while the ignorant mind builds weather vanes.
Darren Main
If there is a heaven we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.
Nicholas Sparks
God never leads us to do anything that is contrary to His Word. But the opposite is also true: God always leads us to do everything that is in agreement with His Word.
Billy Graham
What does it mean to be me? I don't know. Maybe that's just it. Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe that's the answer. Maybe all I am is emptiness, is nothing.
Katherine Ewell
To be a leader, be an example that others may follow.
Debasish Mridha
Her romances often seemed like dalliances; she enjoyed male company and blossomed in its presence, but she did not appear to care deeply about any of the men [Steiner]
Elizabeth Winder
I realized aloud in the midst of saying it that even when we die we probably don't find out the answer as to why we were ever alive. Even the avowed atheist probably thinks that in death he'll get some answer. I mean God will be there, or there won't be anything at all.'But that's just it,' I said, 'we don't make any discovery at that moment! We merely stop! We pass into nonexistence without ever knowing a thing.' I saw the universe, a vision of the sun, the planets, the stars, black night going on forever. And I began to laugh.'Do you realize that! We'll never know why the hell any of it happened, not even when it's over!' I shouted at Nicolas, who was sitting back on the bed, nodding and drinking his wine out of a flagon. 'We're going to die and not even know. We'll never know, and all this meaninglessness will just go on and on and on. And we won't any longer be witness to it. We won't have even that little bit of power to give meaning to it in our minds. We'll just be gone, dead, dead, dead, without ever knowing!
Anne Rice
You won’t starve, R. In my short life I made so many choices just because I thought they were required, but my dad was right: there’s no rule book for the world. It’s in our heads, our collective human hive-mind. If there are rules, we’re the ones making them. We can change them whenever we want to.
Isaac Marion
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve.
Igor Stravinsky
Noah drew me closer to him. "It's okay. I've got you.
Katie McGarry
Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.
Abraham J. Heschel
I love you, Quinn Shaughnessy. From the very first day when we snuck into my house and stole those chocolate chip cookies and then hid behind the jungle gym, I was hooked.
Samantha Chase
Always the following wind of historyOf others' wisdom makes a buoyant airTill we come suddenly on pockets where Is nothing loud but us; where voices seemAbrupt, untrained, competing with no lieOur fathers shouted once.
W.H. Auden
As Gazzaniga put it, "these findings all suggest that the interpretive mechanism of the left hemisphere is always hard at work, seeking the meaning of events. It is constantly looking for order and reasons, even when there is none - which leads it continually to make mistakes.
David Eagleman
He wanted to say that all this talk of feelings was irrelevant. Thatemotions come and go and can't be controlled, so there's no reason to worry about them. That in the end, people should be judged by their actions, since in the end, it was actions that defined everyone.
Nicholas Sparks
By faith in [Jesus] we can be forgiven of our sins and know the joy of following Him every day.
Billy Graham
She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. she was Katie's secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only - the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life - the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.
Betty Smith
You haven't failed until you stop trying.
Jon Gordon
It is possible to become discouraged about the injustice we see everywhere. But God did not promise us that the world would be humane and just. He gives us the gift of life and allows us to choose the way we will use our limited time on earth. It is an awesome opportunity.
César Chávez
How do you ever hold on to anybody?
Elizabeth Wein
Outside, the sleet had gotten thicker. You could hear it pebbling against the large glass windows, you could see it swirling wildly through the spotlights of street lamps. It was the kind of night when you might expect to see a skeleton flying through the air, its ragged black shroud flapping in the wind.
Dan Chaon
We are playing with desires that disappear.
Doug Rice
We don’t want to limit what God can do in our children by trying to parent them alone—Trust God to take care of them.
Stormie Omartian
My Gullah grandfather is bringing a bag of dust to a vampire war. I feel better.
Elle Jasper
Dear God, I ask that you help me with the darkness I’ve been feeling and that you help me make today a changing day in my life. I ask you, dear God, for calm in my mind and your light in my heart. I ask these things in Jesus’s name, amen.
Ron Baratono
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor it cannot save the few who are rich.
John F Kennedy
People up today and down tomorrow, working this week and fired the next, beaten and baffled, but determined not to be wholly beaten, buying furniture on the installment plan, filling the house with roomers to help pay the rent, hoping to get a new suit for Easter—and pawning that suit before the Fourth of July.
Langston Hughes
Weather forecast for tonight: dark.
George Carlin
Deep down I think I may be just like everyone else. And do you know what, Harry?""No sir.""That bothers me.
Joe R. Lansdale