Quotes by American Authors - Page 2407

So much of teaching is sharing. Learning results in sharing, sharing results in change, change is learning. The only other job with so much sharing is parenting. That's probably why the two are so often confused.
Esmé Raji Codell
He shook his head. "The next time I hear a women going on about how neurotic men are, I'm going to remember this. You tell me you like my body, and what do I say? I say, thank you. Then I tell you I like yours and what do I hear? A long lists of grievances.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
I give him a skeptical look. “You want to show me your dick?”“If it’ll help convince you.” He drains the last drops of his Scotch and stands up. “Come on, let’s go.
Kendall Ryan
We can learn to act and think in ways that sow seeds of our future well-being, gradually becoming more aware of what causes happiness as well as what causes distress.
Pema Chödrön
Sometimes one has to know something many times over. Sometimes one forgets, and then remembers. And then forgets, and then remembers. And then forgets again.
Maggie Nelson
Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
To change the action, change thoughts first.
Debasish Mridha
If his relative success hadn't made him happy, it had, on average, made him less unhappy.
Adelle Waldman
I turned to her, my whole body hard with tiredness and regret.
Steven Ramirez
A surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attach importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way.
Theodore J. Kaczynski
You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
Alex Haley
The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand nor the kindly smile nor the joy of companionship it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
[Self]-distrust manifests blatantly in the judge's reaction to your experiences of expansion. 'Expansion' here refers to situations when you try something new, success at something you're never done before, stop a self-destructive habit, speak up in your own defense, recognize a truth about yourself, take on a new responsibility, and so on. The expansion is a shift in your sense of who you are or who you have taken yourself to be: who you are becomes a little bigger, includes a little more than it did before.What does the judge do with these moments? Most everyone has experienced some sort of contraction after they expand: some letdown, some fear creeping in, some shame about being bigger, some withdrawal from the expansion. In one sense, this is part of a natural cycle of expansion and contraction. However, the contraction is seldom seen as part of the normal flow of the unfolding soul.
Byron Brown
The store was empty, without a single customer or employee. It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you.
Marisha Pessl
I am relentlessly determine to be occupied with Jesus Christ and His Glorious Gospel and nothing else.
John Paul Warren
Fire is often the weapon of choice for the insane.
Douglas Preston
The writer,' said Donald Barthelme, 'is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.' In this mode of not-knowing, the thick-torsoed, literal, and crew-cut mind is moved to the sidelines in favor of the swinging, perceptive, light-footed, tutu-wearing subconscious.
George Saunders
Philosophy is the critically reflective, systematically articulated attempt to illumine our human experience in depth and set it in a vision of the whole.
W. Norris Clarke
No one can be right all the time, but it helps to be right most of the time.
Robert Half
Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.
Anne Roiphe
There were times when I would forget her, though they were rare, and it would be for a time as though she had never existed; and then some passing girl's inadvertent gesture, or an accidental profile, or a hat like hers, would restore her, and restore the suffering too, and I would long again, somehow, to encounter or to see her.
Alfred Hayes
Friendship isn't measured in days, months or years, it's measured in the way someone makes you feel.
Alexa Land
Legacy accounting: Will you have been an asset or a liability on the world's balance sheet?
Ryan Lilly
Everyone wants to know why customer service has gone to hell in a handbasket. I want to know why customer behavior has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Brené Brown
When people told me I was so strong for surviving my daughter’s death, I wanted to scream. But the truth is that deep inside we are far more resilient, brave, and incredibly strong for having survived at all. So scream, be brave, and embrace your power. It will become your biggest asset.
Lynda Cheldelin Fell
Sometimes I wish it has been you.
Jennifer Weiner
I was doing my little stand up shtick, the one I did for pretty girls, so they'd like me quickly and wouldn't try too hard to actually get to know me beyond my role as wisecracking Cameron, the orphan. Maybe it was a little like flirting, but also a kind of protection: Don't get too close; I'm just jokes with substance.
Emily M. Danforth
Patty believed that parents have a duty to teach their children how to recognize reality when they see it.
Jonathan Franzen
In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call 'photographs of people talking.' When we tell a story in cinema we should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to do otherwise. I always try to tell a story in the cinematic way, through a succession of shots and bits of film in between.
Alfred Hitchcock
It is certainly true that ‘actions speak louder than words,’ but words become as monuments to thoughts.
Anton Szandor LaVey
In a condition of struggle and of failure we must be able to say "I must try harder" or "I must try differently." Both views are essential . . . A change in either makes for a change in outcome. When we say "I must try harder" we mean that the most relevant variable is something within us - intention, will, determination, "meaning it" . . When we say "I must try differently" we mean that the most relevant variable lies in the situation within which intention is being exerted, that we should look to the environment, to the ways it pushes and pulls at us, and in this study find the means to alter that interaction.
Allen Wheelis
Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try." -- Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude.
Rex Stout
There are some silences that are so huge, and fraught, and haunted, and weighed, and shocked, that they just are; there's nothing you can say about them that makes any sense. All you can do is witness them, and feel some deep ache that such things arrive, and must be endured, with wordless aching all around.
Brian Doyle
Sometimes, the best deed you can do for another person is to not save them from their troubles.
Rita Stradling
He growled at morning noon and night And trouble sought to borrow Although today the sky was bright He knew t'would storm tomorrow A thought of joy he could not stand And struggled to resist it Though sunshine dappled all the land This sorry pessimist it.
Nixon Waterman
It doesn't matter if your life is perfect as long as your hair color is.
Stacy Snapp-Killian aka StacyK
Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from curiosity and discovery. Seek pleasure and you will quickly discover the shortest path to suffering. Other people, friends, brothers, sisters, neighbors, spouses, even your mother and I are not responsible for your happiness. Your life is your responsibility, and you always have the choice to do your best. Doing your best will bring happiness. Do not be overconcerned with avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. If you are concentrating on the results of your actions, you are not dedicated to your task.
Ethan Hawke
I was glad to hear that you were to be confirmed.
Theodore Roosevelt
Peace is achieved when our conscience rests in the fact that we’ve engaged in ‘right’ living, verses believing that living is a ‘right.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It doesn't take an army to change the world, or an average-sized militia group, either. All it takes is one individual to say the word "No". Be it a man refusing to register for the draft, or be it a gun owner refusing to register his weapons in Connecticut, it is the same: defiance in the face of arbitrary authority.
Mike Klepper
Pull yourself together. People among the living still need your help, and I haven't given you permission to quit.
Ann Aguirre
It is not wrong to feel sorry for yourself. Just like it is not wrong to sit in a puddle of water while the rain pours down on your head. But neither is productive, unless you enjoy feeling cold and miserable and soggy while mascara runs down your face.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The next time believers tell you that 'separation of church and state' does not appear in our founding document, tell them to stop using the word 'trinity.' The word 'trinity' appears nowhere in the bible. Neither does Rapture, or Second Coming, or Original Sin. If they are still unfazed (or unphrased), by this, then add Omniscience, Omnipresence, Supernatural,Transcendence, Afterlife, Deity, Divinity, Theology, Monotheism, Missionary, Immaculate Conception, Christmas, Christianity, Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Methodist, Catholic, Pope, Cardinal, Catechism, Purgatory, Penance, Transubstantiation, Excommunication, Dogma, Chastity, Unpardonable Sin, Infallibility, Inerrancy, Incarnation, Epiphany, Sermon, Eucharist, the Lord's Prayer, Good Friday, Doubting Thomas, Advent, Sunday School, Dead Sea, Golden Rule, Moral, Morality, Ethics, Patriotism, Education, Atheism, Apostasy, Conservative (Liberal is in), Capital Punishment, Monogamy, Abortion, Pornography, Homosexual, Lesbian, Fairness, Logic, Republic, Democracy, Capitalism, Funeral, Decalogue, or Bible.
Dan Barker
Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...
William Gibson
Reappraise the past reevaluate where we've been clarify where we are and predict or anticipate where we are headed.
Toni Cade Bambara
We don't value craftsmanship anymore! All we value is ruthless efficiency, and I say we deny our own humanity that way! Without appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them! Our lives are made drearier, rather than richer! How can a person take pride in his work when skill and care are considered luxuries! We're not machines! We have a human need for craftsmanship!
Bill Watterson
After our negotiations were completed, the dome would be imploded and launched toward the nearest black hole, so that none of its atoms would ever contaminate this particular universe again. I thought that last part was overkill.
John Scalzi
An emotion like anger that's an automatic response lasts just ninety seconds from the moment it's triggered until it runs its course. One and a half minutes, that's all. When it lasts any longer, which it usually does, it's because we've chosen to rekindle it.
Pema Chödrön
All my life, I thought I was this independent woman. I was on all the right committees, made speeches for all the right causes, traveled all over the world. I had my little part-time job, I made all my own decisions, but . . . there was always someone there to fall back on when things went bad. Funny, how after so many years of marriage you don’t think about how much you depend on the other person until . . . well, until they’re gone. And then of course there’s just the whole system in the city. Your doctor, your pharmacist, your plumber, your vet . . . there’s always someone there. You never have to find out . . . how much you can’t do.
Donna Ball
Do you really think we'll ever--""I do," he said with certainty, not letting me finish. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "I know it, Sassenach, and so do you. You were meant to be a mother, and I surely dinna intend to let anyone else father your children.
Diana Gabaldon
To all apparent beauties blind, each blemish strikes an envious mind.
Benjamin Franklin
Over the last forty years, many educators, decision-makers, and even some parents have come to regard the arts as peripheral, and let’s face it, frivolous—especially the visual arts, with their connotation of ”the starving artist” and the mistaken concept of necessary talent
Betty Edwards
Create space in your mind for the harsh memories too. Don’t ever cower from a teacher. Learn and live higher because you know how to use those dark memories as stepping-stones to think your way to a higher form of living.
Toni Sorenson
And with her hair, so red, she’d caught my eye... My little red riding hood.
Kenya Wright
...nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.
Patrick Rothfuss
The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you’re adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can’t see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it’s working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces.
Carl Safina
Everything he was, he gave to her.
L.J. Smith
I cannot say enough of appreciation for your determination to live by the standards of the Church, to walk with the strength of virtue, to keep your minds above the slough of filth which seems to be moving like a flood across the world. Thank you for knowing there is a better way. Thank you for the will to say no. Thank you for the strength to deny temptation and look beyond and above to the shining light of your eternal potential.
Gordon B. Hinckley
Now, Joyce being Joyce, he has about five different purposes, one not being enough for genius.
Thomas C. Foster
Anxiety is nothing more than prolonged fear. It comes with prolonged chemical release that does incalculable damage to your neurons over time.
Toni Sorenson