Quotes by American Authors - Page 2172

There is no good day or a bad day, but our perception makes it so.
Debasish Mridha
A day ago, the sight of a man removing his face would have blown thick chunks of Aiden’s mind out the back of his head, but not today. Today Aiden was fresh out of shock and running low on wonder.
Matt K. Turner
Jena Sinclair had taught him a couple of things about himself in the past few minutes that he didn’t want to know.tFirst, sometime in the past five years, a deep fatigue had wrapped itself around him – not the fatigue that could be slept off with a soft bed and a warm blanket, but the fatigue caused by a tightened harness that restricted. That promised no end to long days and longer nights. A harness of his own making.tCole had realized another surprising thing too. Very surprising for the man who needed nothing and no one.tHe was lonely.
Susannah Sandlin
We’re a society that creates super heroes who aren’t really super heroes. They are just regular people who live in alignment with their goals and dreams. They don’t just talk about it, the LIVE it. You can choose to do the same.
Steve Maraboli
It‘s utterly astounding that every time I get knocked down God’s mercy compassionately raises me to my feet; His grace thoroughly brushes off every trace of assorted filth I accumulated in the fall, His word precisely recalibrates my direction to insure the success of a journey resumed, and once all of that is completed He gently leans over and whispers, “How about another run?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
I’ll make you a deal. I’ll toast to us becoming great friends if you promise to tell me when you want something more with me."My eyes rounded, then I tossed back my head, laughing at his deliberate word choice. When, not if."You're something else," I teased.He shook his head. "Nah, just optimistic.""All right." I lifted my glass. "You've got yourself a deal.
Kerry Lonsdale
Hatred is unattractive, but it's also irresistible. If men were honest with themselves, they'd admit it's a stronger passion than lust.
Norman Lock
The war to preserve the privilege of mythmaking
Marvin Bell
It sometimes entered Mr. Pontellier's mind to wonder if his wife were not growing a little unbalanced mentally. He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.
Kate Chopin
The books [poetry collections] may not sell, but neither are they given away or thrown away. They tend, more than other books, to fall apart in their owners’ hands. Not I suppose good news in a culture and economy built on obsolescence. But for a book to be loved this way and turned to this way for consolation and intense renewable excitement seems to me a marvel.
Louise Glück
Mix•tBe situationally aware and pay attention to the people in the room. •tIntroduce guests or help strike up a conversation. •tBe the one who takes the initiative and makes and effort to “work the room.”•tMake eye contact and acknowledge others with a smile and friendly gestures.•tGreet people as they arrive, even if it is not your expected role.•tSpot the people who may be first timers or guests and help them feel more welcomed and embraced.
Susan C.Young
All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.
Susan Sontag
Friends are medicine for a wounded heart and vitamins for a hopeful soul.
Steve Maraboli
See yourself as the perfect creation that you are, but at the same time, recognize with sincere honesty, the areas of your life that are out of balance and get to work to improve and grow.
Dashama Konah Gordon
There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.
Kahlil Gibran
There is that, and there is also the Irreconcilable Differences line. It seems so catchall, so vague. You could say that about anyone, any man and woman at all. Jesus and Mary Magdalene: "Irreconcilable Differences." JFK and Jackie, anyone at all. It´s built into the man-woman thing. What kind of paltry reason is that? "Insanity" is another box to be checked on the divorce petition, the only alternative to "Irreconcilable Differences." I would like to check it.
Suzanne Finnamore
In all his imaginings, he had never envisioned her crying. He knew that her son had died, but he'd never expected that her pain might be anything he could recognize, almost as though he believed that Negroes had their own special kind of grieving ritual, another language, something other than tears they used to express their sadness.
Bebe Moore Campbell
A tap is a zero-length swipe.
Apple Inc.
And although I appreciated their kindness more than they would ever know, it's a fact that friends last longer the less you use them.
Lisa Kleypas
She said she wanted to see beautiful things. I took her to where i planted my seeds.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Alchemy is the process of changing lead into gold. Inner alchemy (personal transformation) occurs when we clear our clutter—internal and external—and let go of things that no longer serve us well. This creates balance and space, a place that nurtures contentment, which I believe is true success.
Laurie Buchanan
Your horse is named Small.Yes.Mine is named Big.-Fire and Brigan
Kristin Cashore
I would be dreadfully remiss not to think that God would painstakingly craft something an intimately ingenious and inexplicably intricate as my life, and that by virtue of such sheer brilliance I should not examine it with the greatest precision and unleash it with the fullest abandon.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
To be charitable, one may admit that the religious often seem unaware of how insulting their main proposition actually is. Exchange views with a believer even for a short time, and let us make the assumption that this is a mild and decent believer who does not open the bidding by telling you that your unbelief will endanger your soul and condemn you to hell. It will not be long until you are politely asked how you can possibly know right from wrong. Without holy awe, what is to prevent you form resorting to theft, murder, rape, and perjury? It will sometimes be conceded that non-believers have led ethical lives, and it will also be conceded (as it had better be) that many believers have been responsible for terrible crimes. Nonetheless, the working assumption is that we should have no moral compass if we were not somehow in thrall to an unalterable and unchallengeable celestial dictatorship. What a repulsive idea!
Christopher Hitchens
It is never too early to start thinking about your own death and the deaths of those you love. I don’t mean thinking about death in obsessive loops, fretting that your husband has been crushed in a horrific car accident, or that your plane will catch fire and plummet from the sky. But rational interaction, that ends with you realizing that you will survive the worst, whatever the worst may be. Accepting death doesn’t mean that you won’t be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn’t happening to you. Death is happening to us all.
Caitlin Doughty
I read differently now, more painstakingly, knowing I am probably revisiting the books I love for the last time. (245)
Nicole Krauss
Much like humans, opinions come in all shapes and forms, but in the end, they are just what they are; and may yet still be categorized in nature. The first you might say is the Indoctrinal, which is, of course, dictated by community and necessity, by the human need for acceptance; secondly, there is the Personal, and this is often dictated by individuality, by the yearning to seem interesting and intelligent, or free, or special; and lastly comes the Emotional. This is most commonly dictated by circumstance and bitterness and excitement. However, rarely do we find the case in which any of these are dictated by reason in the pure state: it is by this we see that at the core of a number of false opinions lies not always misinformation but quite often some issue of the human self.
Criss Jami
A dream is just as good, and will go as far as an action.
Anthony Liccione
The photographer is now charging real beasts, beleaguered and too rare to kill. Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been - what people needed protection from. Now nature - tamed, endangered, mortal - needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.
Susan Sontag
I promise it'll only hurt half as much as I wish it would." The words came out as smooth and sweet as if she'd just told him that mint chocolate chip was the best flavor ice cream ever.
Avery Flynn
…one world’s poison might be another’s salvation
Claudia Gray
It wasn't that she lit up, but that everything else seemed to dim. Things he thought were important or bright turned out not to be when she was around, when they were held up against her glow.
L.C. Fiore
For a product to carry a health claim on its package, it must first have a package, so right off the bat it's more likely to be processed rather than a whole food.
Michael Pollan
First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
God is strongest when we are weakest.
Janice Cantore
It wasn't fair to pull her into that vortex, because I couldn't be fixed. And Roxy was a fixer. She thought she could help me, I could see it in her eyes.
Ashleigh Z.
scrub oak trees. Kieran was leaning against him, pinning him to the tree, and they were kissing. Cristina hesitated a moment, blood rising into her face, but it was clear Mark wasn’t being touched against his will. Mark’s hands were tangled in Kieran’s hair, and he was kissing him as fiercely as if he were starving. Their bodies were pressed together tightly; nevertheless, Kieran clutched at Mark’s waist, his hands moving restlessly, desperately, as if he could pull Mark closer still. They slid up, pushing Mark’s jacket off his shoulders, stroking the skin at the edge of his collar. He made a low keening sound, like a cry of grief, deep in his throat, and broke away. He was staring at Mark, his gaze as hungry as it was hopeless. Never had a faerie looked so human to Cristina as Kieran did then. Mark looked back at him, eyes wide, shining in the moonlight. A shared look of love and longing and terrible sadness. It was too much. It had already been too much: Cristina knew she shouldn’t have been watching them but she hadn’t been able to stop, mingled shock and fascination rooting her to the spot. And desire. There was desire, too. Whether for Mark, or for both of them, or just for the idea of wanting someone so much, she wasn’t sure. She moved back, her heart pounding, about to pull the
Cassandra Clare
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.An all plans, safeguards, policies and coercion are fruitless.We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck
How often we find ourselves turning our backs on our actual friends that we may go and meet their ideal cousins.
Henry David Thoreau
But after all we are not children, not illiterate juvenile delinquents, not English public school boys who after a night of homosexual romps have to endure the paradox of reading the Ancients in expurgated versions.
Vladimir Nabokov
We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else.
Trevor D. Richardson
You see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name.
Thomas Ligotti
We grew up hearing stories about how he has been cheated - out of money, out of reputation, out of a grander fate. We had lost everything, he'd wail, and that was despite the fact that we had each other.
Alison Singh Gee
The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.
Paul Tillich
The person you are in the dark will eventually be the person you are in the light.
Ray Lewis
What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired.
Naomi Wolf
Kindness and caring are ambrosia for the soul.
Amy Leigh Mercree
As our body journeys through life, and life journeys on our body….life will leave marks on us too. From the creases of our wrinkles to the birthmarks on our bodies to the tattoos we decide to place.
lauren klarfeld
It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right. No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you. All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because all that matters in business is that you get it right once. Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.
Mark Cuban
Because I want to be remembered.
Sherman Alexie
God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
Henry David Thoreau
Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change -Clary Fray
Cassandra Clare
Think back to the oldest era your mind can fathom, back beyond everything we can remember, when gods were still men who had not yet lived the deeds that would deify them.
Angela B. Chrysler
I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.
Andrew Levkoff
To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project.
Cornel West
Question and AnswerDurban, Birmingham,Cape Town, Alabama,Johannesburg, Watts,The earth aroundStruggling, fighting,Dying--for what?A world to gain.Groping, hoping,Waiting--for what?A world to gain.Dreams kicked asunder,Why not go under?There's a world to gain.But suppose I don't want it,Why take it?To remake it.
Langston Hughes
It is difficult to process the sacred masculine when your closest example has been a man smacking you around, verbally degrading you, lording over you, or otherwise proving a poor demonstration of the use of strength.
Thomm Quackenbush
Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.
Les Brown
Lots of men think that women should tell the truth, explain their feelings. These men should use their wishes more wisely. (Prepare To Die!, p.27)
Paul Tobin
You don't write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid's burnt socks lying in the road.
Richard Price