Quotes by American Authors - Page 2181

...the end goal of feminist revolution must be...not just the elimination of male privilage but of the sex distinction itself: genital differences between human beings would no longer matter culturally.
Shulamith Firestone
Life is a celebration. Free your mind to find the liberation.
Debasish Mridha
A book is much more than a delivery vehicle for its contents.
Allison Hoover Bartlett
The truth is no one should hold you at a higher standard than yourself
Jerry Gladstone
The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others’ ideas to be realized.
Mel Chin
There are days when I think I don't believe anymore. When I think I've grown too old for miracles. And that's right when another seems to happen.
Dana Reinhardt
Kissing was an extension of that, a celebration. A little party between us, amplifying our naive joy, our faith that the world was delighted to give us just what we wanted.
Katie Alender
People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.
Roman Payne
It is impossible to know the whole depth of someone’s character from a single moment, but seeing how they respond to the unexpected is a great start.
Lance Conrad
No heart is as whole as a broken heart, and no faith is as solid as a wounded faith." Elie Wiesel
John Ortberg
Everyone enjoys being acknowledged and appreciated. Sometimes even the simplest act of gratitude can change someone's entire day. Take the time to recognize and value the people around you and appreciate those who make a difference in your lives.
Roy T. Bennett
His Majesty needs a can-I girl anyway. And I'm not it.""A can-I girl?" Andrea frowned. I leaned back. "'Can I fetch your food, Your Majesty? Can I tell you how strong and mighty you are, Your Majesty? Can I pick your fleas, Your Majesty? Can I kiss your ass, Your Majesty? Can I..." It dawned on me that Raphael was sitting very still. Frozen, like a statue, his gaze fixed on the point above my head. "He's standing behind me, isn't he?" Andrea nodded slowly."Technically it should be 'may I'," Curran said, his voice deeper than I remembered. "Since you're asking for permission." Why me? "To answer your question, yes, you may kiss my ass. Normally I prefer maintain my personal space, but you're a Friend of the Pack and your services have proven useful once or twice. I strive to accommodate the wishes of persons friendly to my people. My only question is, would kissing my ass be obeisance, grooming, or foreplay?
Ilona Andrews
There is never a restless night for the dark soul. They sleep well within a destiny sealed and accepted in trade for the spoils of the earth
Carl Henegan
Grace doesn't grease the wheels of the law. Grace isn't God's way of jury rigging a broken law. It's the other way around. The law is just one small cog in a world animated entirely--from top to bottom, from beginning to end--by grace.
Adam S. Miller
Adrienne started teaching a few months ago in Denver and wrote that it leaves you with a constant feeling of deceiving people. That you know nothing they don't, or couldn't learn on their own if they cared to.
David Sedaris
Longing, because I miss her. I miss talking to her as me. Lust greater than I've ever known, because we're like this, it's the only time she softens and changes and gives me an inch, and it's a need that's in my head just as much as my body. It keeps me on my toes.
Penelope Douglas
Organizations can’t change their culture unless individual employees change their behavior—and changing behavior is hard.
Keith Ferrazzi
Vincent made his way closer to the group and shuffled his feet while he watched them embrace. Breccan's head remained buried in the huddle while his large hand reached out, grabbed Vincent's good wing, and pulled the archangel into the fold.
Madison Thorne Grey
The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. The professional steels himself at the start of a project, reminding himself it is the Iditarod, not the sixty-yard dash. He conserves his energy. He prepares his mind for the long haul. He sustains himself with the knowledge that if he can just keep those huskies mushing, sooner or later the sled will pull in to Nome.
Steven Pressfield
For as long as I could remember, I had been transparent to myself, unselfconscious, learning, doing, most of every day. Now I was in my own way; I myself was a dark object I could not ignore. I couldn't remember how to forget myself. I didn't want to think about myself, to reckon myself in, to deal with myself every livelong minute on top of everything else - but swerve as I might, I couldn't avoid it. I was a boulder blocking my own path. I was a dog barking between my own ears, a barking dog who wouldn't hush. So this was adolescence. Is this how the people around me had died on their feet - inevitably, helplessly? Perhaps their own selves eclipsed the sun for so many years the world shriveled around them, and when at least their inescapable orbits had passed through these dark egoistic years it was too late, they had adjusted. Must I then lose the world forever, that I had so loved? Was it all, the whole bright and various planet, where I had been so ardent about finding myself alive, only a passion peculiar to children, that I would outgrow even against my will?
Annie Dillard
I believe the sign of maturity is accepting deferred gratification.
Peggy Cahn
Advice to son: Never confuse "I love you" with "I want to marry you."
Cleveland Amory
I would like to believe and give in to my naiveté, I would like to embrace the fact that I am back in the place where the long fingers of civilization cannot reach me and rip my heart out. At this moment, I would like to embrace myself. I would like to be unconcerned with the rest of the world and take pleasure in knowing that I have found my home. All of my life, all of my adult life, which began with the first notion of understanding, I have been searching for this sensation. You, cruel world, have tried to bring me down, tried to crush me with your code of conduct, your ethics, and your preconceived limits on liberty. You have raped me and robbed me of happiness; you have stolen my dreams and my dignity, leaving me to rot with the rest of you. Today, I know I have escaped your poisoned web; I know your rules do not apply to me, for after all you have done to crush me, I am still standing proudly above the set of your sick play. I am in love—a feeling you no longer thought I was capable of. I am in love—living, breathing, dreaming again—triumphant over your sick schemes.
Henry Martin
It wasn't work. I played myself.
Dick Van Dyke
Ingenuity requires creativity.
Veronica Roth
Your hair is your halo, Wear it well!
Stacy Snapp-Killian aka StacyK
As an associate at McKinsey & Company, my first assignment was on a team that consisted of a male senior engagement manager (SEM) and two other male associates, Abe Wu and Derek Holley. When the SEM wanted to talk to Abe or Derek, he would walk over to their desks. When he wanted to talk to me, he would sit at his desk and shout, "Sandberg, get over here!" with the tone one might use to call a child or, even worse, a dog. It made me cringe every time. I never said anything, but one day Abe and Derek started calling each other "Sandberg" in that same loud voice. The self-absorbed SEM never seemed to notice. They kept it up. When having too many Sandbergs got confusing, they decided we needed to differentiate. Abe started calling himself "Asian Sandberg," Derek dubbed himself "good-looking Sandberg," and I became "Sandberg Sandberg." My colleagues turned an awful situation into one where I felt protected. They stood up for me and made me laugh. They were the best mentors I could have had.
Sheryl Sandberg
Mister Win-Win says it's always okay to pretend... He says that's the only way to feel happy sometimes.
Lauren Cagliola Green
Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections.
Ted Chiang
I turned to look into his face one last time. It was as if I could see the whole universe in his eyes. Maybe he was God, maybe he was simply enlightened. I didn't care right then, in that blessed moment, I just loved him. Later, though, the love was to turn to hate, to fear. They seemed so opposite, the feelings, yet they were all one note on his flute.
Christopher Pike
It’s my life and I’m not afraid to LIVE it! I would rather experience the ups and downs of a life I have chosen, than to suffer the regret of a life I have settled for.
Steve Maraboli
If the meaning of life has become doubtful, if one's relations to others and to oneself do not offer security, then fame is one means to silence one's doubts. It has a function to be compared with that of the Egyptian pyramids or the Christian faith in immortality: it elevates one's individual life from its limitations and instability to the plane of indestructability; if one's name is known to one's contemporaries and if one can hope that it will last for centuries, then one's life has meaning and significance by this very reflection of it in the judgments of others.
Erich Fromm
I'm not feisty. But when you're as small as I am and female if you don't stand up for your rights, you're sure to be pushed around by big, hairy, smelly men with delusions about male superiority.
Robert A. Heinlein
The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.
Freeman Dyson
As long as high schools strive to list the number of Ivy League schools their graduates attend and teachers pile on work without being trained to identify stress-related symptoms, I fear for our children’s health. I am not mollified by the alums of my daughter’s school who return to tell everyone that the rigor of high school prepared them for college, making their first year easier than they’d anticipated.If they make it that far.
Candy Schulman
Life and death- what paltry words, what tarnished bookends,what unjust summation for drawing breath one moment and failing to release it the next.
Rebecca Rasmussen
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Kahlil Gibran
It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.
Billy Graham
When the dead betray the living, the victims are memories.--The Book of Brin
Michael J. Sullivan
I try not to judge people. It's wrong and unfair and a terrible way to go about being a human.
Joselyn Hughes
Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive.
Frederick Turner
Must it all be either less or more,Either plain or grand?Is it always 'or'?Is it never 'and'?That's what woods are for:For those moments in the woods...Oh, if life were made of moments,Even now and then a bad one--!But if life were only moments,Then you'd never know you had one....to get what you wish, only just for a moment--These are dangerous woods!Let the moment go...Don't forget it for a moment, though.Just remembering you had an 'and,' when you're back to 'or,'Makes the 'or' mean more than is did before.Now I understand--And it's time to leave the woods.
Stephen Sondheim
And I'm probably wrong. Maybe not completely, but partially. And maybe not today, but eventually.
Chuck Klosterman
I won't say that you're pretty because that dog already did. And I won't say you're funny because you have had me laughing since I met you.
Melissa Landers
All salvation is temporary, . . . I bought them a minute. Maybe that's the minute that buys them an hour, which is the hour that buys them a year. No one's gonna buy them forever, Hazel Grace, but my life bought them a minute. And that's not nothing.
John Green
The only color I judge people by is the color of their teeth.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.
Alasdair MacIntyre
One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola.
Derrick Jensen
That’s the best thing about friendship. It is a gift that cannot be lost. Only thrown away.
E.E. Knight
Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell.
Libba Bray
But there is one person who expected the unexpected from me and the only time I noticed disappointment on his face was when I cowered like a sheep. And I had to take a moment to figure out I'm not ashamed of him. It's him who should be ashamed of me. I've put Razor in an unfair position. He introduced me to his world. Welcomed me with open arms. Made me feel like I belonged and I've asked him to keep a secret when doing so is killing him. And I told him that we would be over...I did the exact thing to him that Clara did to me and that's not okay. No part of it is okay.
Katie McGarry
And in her long nights, in her long house of smoke and miller's stones, she baked the bread we eat in dreams, strangest loaves, her pies full of anguish and days long dead, her fairy-haunted gingerbread, her cakes wet with tears.
Catherynne M. Valente
The heartland lies where the heart longs to be. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find the true place to plant it.
Vera Nazarian
Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance.
Kate Elliott
Anything for Byron’s least favorite apprentice. It’s the least I can do since you took over my torch.
Rachel E. Carter
Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can't help themselves not only drives home the point that women's sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men's sexual behavior.
Jessica Valenti
I don't believe in sin. My relationships that failed have failed because I somehow attract devout christians. I don't believe in virtue either. I think people just do shit and it's life.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Indeed, girls can be so in need of social approval that they confuse harassment for acceptance--thinking that any attention is better than none. Since many girls as well as boys buy the idea that sexual aggression and exploitation is normal masculine behavior, it may not even occur to them to demand to be treated as equals.
Leora Tanenbaum
We need a language that brings us together about the deepest things we care about rather than pushing us apart.
Joseph Jaworski
Good and bad exist always, everywhere
R. Alan Woods