Quotes by American Authors - Page 230

Remember how far you've come, not just how far you have to go. You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.
Rick Warren
Poseidon held out his arms and gave me a hug. I realized, a little embarrassed, that I'd never actually hugged my dad before. He was warm—like a regular human—and he smelled of a salty beach and fresh sea air.
Rick Riordan
Change your introduction so that you can change the outcome. Engage clients or they'll be thinking divorce.
Rob Liano
Life is not kind. Who are you trying to kid, Kendall?” He sighed.
Holly Hood
What hasty preperations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we’re sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we’ll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.
Chang-rae Lee
No one says: I broke rules, I broke rules, I broke rules - I broke all the rules. That one. And that one. And that one too. Yes, I did.
Joanna Brooks
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Hellen Keller
Even when we do not actively participate in our destiny, we are still on a chosen path. Life has a way of making decisions for us.
Nina Guilbeau
I've been noble since they took you to the hospital," he said through his teeth. "I'm tired of it. I don't eat, I don't sleep, I can't even work. I remember your voice moaning in my ear like the cry of the damned while I was having you," he bit off, bending to her mouth. "You couldn't get enough of me. You couldn't get close enough to me. Your face when I fulfilled you....I ache every time I think about it.
Diana Palmer
Listen carefully, I’m going to say three words.”“I love you?
Lisa Scottoline
My life isn't good or bad. It's an incredible series of emotional and mental extremes, with beautiful thunderstorms and stunning sunrises.Some would say this is my artistic temperament. Others would say i am mentally ill or bipolar. I SAY... it's a bit of both and i make the most of them, CREATIVELY.
Jaeda DeWalt
A rap at the back door made her jump, and she peered through the window for a long time before she eased open the door a crack. She left the security chain on. 'What do you want, Richard?'Richard Morrell's police cruiser was parked in the drive. He hadn't flashed any lights or howled any sirens, so she supposed it wasn't an emergency, exactly. But she knew him well enough to know he didn't pay social visits, at least not to the Glass House.'Good question,' Richard said. 'I guess I want a nice girl who can cook, likes action movies, and looks good in short skirts. But I'll settle for you taking the chain off the door and letting me in.
Rachel Caine
Gus and I talk about girls a lot, but we can't figure them out. They are so confusing. Like, if you look at them, they get mad. And if you don't look at them, they get mad. And if you're nice to them, they think you like them. And if you're mean to them, they think you like them. And if you do like them, they think you hate them.
Lisa Yee
Civic participants don't aim to make life better merely for members of the group. They want to improve even the lives of people who never participate...
Clay Shirky
The efforts of a leader will be emulated. Depending on the quality of appointed leadership, this can be medicine or poison to a living business.
Steve Maraboli
Own your truths—all of them. Be honest. Be genuine. Be straightforward. Be refreshing!
Susan C.Young
I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.
Stanley Kunitz
...civility doesn't require consensus or the suspension of criticism. It is simply the ability to disagree productively with others while respecting their sincerity and decency.
Ravi Iyer and Jonathan Haidt
The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.
Robert A. Heinlein
It's why I went into teaching in the first place. I like the sound of my own voice. Well that, and I am addicted to the smell of chalk and white-board markers.
Mercy Celeste
When you encounter another person, when you have dealings with anyone at all, it is as if a question is being put to you. So you must think, What is the Lord asking of me in this moment, in this situation? ... This is an emissary sent from the Lord, and some benefit is intended for me, first of all the occasion to demonstrate my faithfulness, the chance to show that I do in some small degree participate in the grace that saved me, you are free to act otherwise than as circumstances would seem to dictate.
Marilynne Robinson
There is always the exceptional child, but the average tells us that the child is largely what the home has made him.
Billy Graham
Every family is a family of alligators.
Lorrie Moore
And all I could do while I listened to this dude tell me how punk rock saved his life was think, Wow. Why did my friend waste all that time going to chemotherapy? I guess we should have just played him a bunch of shitty Black Flag records.
Chuck Klosterman
It is one thing to know what is to come. It is another thing to confront it.
Geraldine Brooks
When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.
Bill Watterson
Tell me there is still good in the world. Tell me there is still hope for all of us.
Marie Lu
Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.
Kahlil Gibran
To my Black brothers and sisters, choose faith. As difficult as it is, choose faith—the kind of faith that we know without works is dead. The faith that raises awareness, educates the community, advocates, cares for the widows and feeds the orphans. Choose the faith that is compelled to action, but not controlled my anger.
Andrena Sawyer
In foster care it’s easier to measure what you’ve lost over what you have gained, because it there aren’t many gains in that life and you are a prisoner to someone else’s plans for your life.
John William Tuohy
The Harvester was the rustling of autumn leaves, there one minute, gone the next.
Jolene Haley
Earning is a product of learning. You're only one letter away from earning more.
Richie Norton
The bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear—we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender…In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be.
Maureen Brady
She was completely alone, only the distant call of a bird telling her a world existed outside of her circle of pain.
Roseanna M. White
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen
Project a confident image through good body posture.
Cindy Ann Peterson
It circulated for five years through the halls of fifteen publishers and finally ended up with Vanguard Press which as you can see is rather deep into the alphabet.
Patrick Dennis
...insisting that you control the topic of behavioral conversation ensures accountability by students...
Doug Lemov
Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
If basketball was going to enable Bradley to make friends, to prove that a banker's son is as good as the next fellow, to prove that he could do without being the greatest-end-ever at Missouri, to prove that he was not chicken, and to live up to his mother's championship standards, and if he was going to have some moments left over to savor his delight in the game, he obviously needed considerable practice, so he borrowed keys to the gym and set a schedule for himself that he adhereded to for four full years—in the school year, three and a half hours every day after school, nine to five on Saturday, one-thirty to five on Sunday, and, in the summer, about three hours a day.
John McPhee
I believe it went like this—and stop me if I’m wrong, Mousey: ‘Listen, we may not be our own continent and everything, but we have a big country over in America too.
Elle Lothlorien
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.
Byron Katie
I rarely take time to feel embarrassed. I just figure it's God keeping me humble, and try not to mess up again.
Peggy Perry
I say to life, "You are very hard", and I also say: "We are blind, we prefer to be blind. It is easier...". Life has to be hard to have any affect on us; even now we hardly notice it. Beyond that can one go? I must. I add, "We are also blind to the miracles of good that come to us. We hardly heed them, we even protest against them". Then I am left where I was, appalled by the hardness of life, knowing we are forced to be unwilling heroes. Suddenly I wonder--is all hardness justified because we are so slow in realizing that life was meant to be heroic? Greatness is required of us. That is life's aim and justification, and we poor fools have for centuries been trying to make it convenient, manageable, pliant to our will. It is also peaceful and tender and funny and dull. Yes, all that.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
There are plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women.
Joanna Russ
Information paints no picture, sings no song, and writes no poem.
R.F. Georgy
People use words to do battle and to hurt one another terribly, tragically and even mortally.
Bryant McGill
Through the practice of compassion and forgiveness, I was able to sustain my appreciation for her work and cope with the grief and disappointment I felt about the loss of this relationship. Practicing compassion enabled me to understand why she might have acted as she did and to forgive her. Forgiving means that I am able to see her as a member of my community still, one who has a place in my heart should she wish to claim it.
Bell Hooks
Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
Sarah Dessen
His gaze glossed over a stack of wooden crates and landed on a steamer trunk that was covered with stickers from all over the world.
Megan Frazer Blakemore
If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.
Rob Bell
…be awake to the Life that is loving you andsing your prayer, laugh your prayer, dance your prayer, runand weep and sweat your prayer,sleep your prayer, eat your prayer, paint, sculpt, hammer, and read your prayer, sweep, dig, rake, drive and hoe your prayer,garden and farm and build and clean your prayer,wash, iron, vacuum, sew, embroider and pickle your prayer,compute, touch, bend and fold but never deleteor mutilate your prayer.Learn and play your prayer, work and rest your prayer,fast and feast your prayer, argue, talk, whisper, listen and shout your prayer,groan and moan and spit and sneeze your prayer,swim and hunt and cook your prayer,digest and become your prayer,release and recover your prayer,breathe your prayer, be your prayer
Alla Renée Bozarth
If our well-being depends upon the interaction between events in our brains and events in the world, and there are better and worse ways to secure it, then some cultures will tend to produce lives that are more worth living than others; some political persuasions will be more enlightened than others; and some world views will be mistaken in ways that cause needless human misery.
Sam Harris
A journalist's job is to collect information," Ovid said to Pete. "Nope," Pete said. "That's what we do. It's not what they do." Dellarobia was unready to be pushed out of the conversation just like that. "Then what do you think the news people drive their Jeeps all the way out here for?" "To shore up the prevailing view of their audience and sponsors." "Pete takes a dim view of his fellow humans," Ovid said. "He prefers insects. Dellarobia turned her chair halfway around to face Pete, scraping noisily against the cement floor. "You're saying people only tune in to news they know they're going to agree with?" "Bingo," said Pete.
Barbara Kingsolver
You broke meI’m trying to put allthe piecesback togetherThe processis takinglonger than expected.
Melody Lee
Don’t promise when you’re happy, don’t reply when you’re angry, and don’t decide when you’re sad.
Ziad K. Abdelnour
(Da) "Sorry, Son, what was that? I was too busy ignoring you."(Later) "Sorry, Son, I missed that," Ma said. "Ignoring you can be a full-time job.
Brian Farrey
Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.
Morgan Spurlock
Love is the ultimate salvation of the soul.
Kilroy J. Oldster
No one likes to feel used. When the perceived focus becomes the content over the person, people feel used. When teachers are valued only for the test scores of their students, they feel used. When administrators are "successful" only when they achieve "highly effective school" status, they feel used. Eventually, "used" people lose joy in learning and teaching. Curriculum does not teach; teachers do. Standards don't encourage; administrators do. Peaceable schools value personnel and students for who they are as worthy human beings. ... If your mission statement says you care, then specific practices of care should be habits within your school.
Lorraine Stutzman Amstutz