Quotes by American Authors - Page 2408

Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate—love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators.
Diane Ackerman
Faith is the mortar that fills the cracks in the evidence and the gaps in the logic, and thus it is faith that keeps the whole terrible edifice of religious certainty still looming dangerously over our world.
Sam Harris
Do we really need a study on why people lie? They lie because it's easy, and cowards are good at "easy." Telling the truth takes moxie, and few have it.
Donna Lynn Hope
If only you could see the greatness in yourself, you wouldn't envy the greatness in others.
Suzy Kassem
Her hand drifted over his left nipple, and one of her fingers moved, sending lightning straight down to his groin. She was killing him, but he'd be damned if he moved one tiny inch. And if he was really, really lucky, she'd do it again.
Kathy Lyons
Human migration is an important part of our ancestral story. The places we live shape us, the places we leave behind forges our history, and the places we might travel to becomes our mysterious future.
Kilroy J. Oldster
That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
Charles Bukowski
My definition of good literature is that which can be read by an educated reader, and reread with increased pleasure.
Gene Wolfe
Peter will love Lara Jean with all his heart, always.
Jenny Han
And then, without any warning at all, he presses his lips against mine. As his mouth covers my own, I find myself reeling, as if I have been tipped backward and am falling, falling, so that even the stars in the sky are spinning. His lips are warm and soft, the unrelenting pull of his desire for me as strong as the pull of the waves against the sand. It is not like practicing with Ismae, or even Sybella. It is not like any of the first kisses I have imagined over the years. It is far, far better and more wondrous, and yet terrifying as well, like one of the raging storms that pound against the convent walls in the winter, threatening to breach its defenses. So too does this kiss threaten something deep within me that I cannot even name.
Robin LaFevers
Sometimes you have to lie. Sometimes it’s the only way to protect the ones you love.
Emily Bleeker
I want revenge, but I don't want to screw up my karma.
Susane Colasanti
What an awful thing then, being there in our house together with our daughter gone, trying to be equal to so many sudden orders of sorrow, any one of which alone would have wrenched us from our fragile orbits around each other.
Paul Harding
What we need today is men who take a stand on the Word of God and stop trying to fit in or preach a socially acceptable Gospel ...We need men like Caleb, when they see the giants of Atheism, Political Correctness, Social Pressure to alter the Bible and a polluted education system and say "we are well able to overcome it.
Pastor Steve Bainbridge
Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
Ann Landers
Any society that justifies violence against any human being for any reason will be a violent society. It will ultimately infect and affect the whole society. Everyone will suffer.
Debasish Mridha
Embrace the probability of your imminent death....and know there is nothing i can do to save you.
Suzanne Collins
You're allowed to be sad and angry. You're not allowed to give up.
Karen Salmansohn
Forget the chicken-nugget smoke screen. Percy wanted Leo to invent an anti-dream hat.
Rick Riordan
Smile to be a flower of joy.
Debasish Mridha
Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord, but sometimes it's hard not to get a jump on it yourself.
Robin Brande
Bravery is the choice to show up and listen to another person, be it a loved one or perceived foe, even when it is uncomfortable, painful, or the last thing you want to do.
Alaric Hutchinson
Indeed, Dr Haxhausen fought to preserve his freedom with very good reason, for he required a great deal of it—freedom, not reason—to pursue his plans for the future.
Thomas Ligotti
For their surface area, insects weigh very little. A beetle, falling from a high altitude, quickly achieves terminal velocity: air resistance prevents it from falling very fast, and, after alighting on the ground, it will walk away, apparently none the worse for the experience… In contrast, human beings are characteristically maimed or killed by any fall of more than a few dozen feet: because of our size, we weigh too much for our surface area.
Carl Sagan
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.
John Bradshaw
Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.
Laurell K. Hamilton
You need to learn how to walk the world, he told me. There's a lot out there.
Junot Díaz
No one dreamed them up. No one needed to. The vampire clawing at the window, the werewolf prowling the moor, the hags at the crossroads – they lurked here already. Some nightmares are ancient, as old as civilization. Some are older still.
Robert Dunbar
People only picked the pretty, sweet-smelling flowers. The ones with thorns were left alone.
Nenia Campbell
If you can’t save your own life, is it even worth saving?
Rainbow Rowell
If you can understand human behavior, it can’t hurt you nearly as much.
Carol Plum-Ucci
Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.
Josh Billings
Something stirred within him that was new, dangerous. The question of whether that was wise. ‘Sure.
Jessica O'Toole
They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis)
Edith Hamilton
Sometimes losses in life are not losses at all. They are simply the evidence God provides, in order to build a story so profound, that it will cause social change.
Shannon L. Alder
The forest, like a casino, always wins. That's why you should never gamble, or enter the forest. And above all, never underestimate Schmidty.
Gitty Daneshvari
And you will not hurt him anymore. Not one of you. Because I am his protector. His rear guard. I am his" -Tara Reese
Lucian Bane
I was choosing, and I was choosing Kellan.
Tijan
It was one of those situations I often find myself in while traveling. Something's said by a stranger I've been randomly thrown into contact with, and I want to say, "Listen. I'm with you on most of this, but before we continue, I need to know who you voted for in the last election.
David Sedaris
Get busy to love everyone, you will not have time or opportunity to fight with anyone.
Debasish Mridha
An ability to look into the confusing mess of life and see things for what they are.
Suzanne Collins
I realized someone else might tell you you're pretty. I'd do anything to keep you away from that person.
Rae Hachton
Your breakthrough is on the way. Don't be discouraged if things are not working out right now. God is working it all out behind the scenes. It may not come when you want, but trust that it will be right on time, because our God is an on time God.
Germany Kent
Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.
Catherynne M. Valente
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Frederick Douglass
But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.
Toni Morrison
I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part on the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him.
Frank Herbert
If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.
Susan Sontag
Only remember this: to seek justice is a good and noble thing, to seek revenge out of hatred is something that wiil devour your very soul.
James Mace
So, when I thought June might take you away, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like she was taking everything that mattered to me. I felt like she was taking away from you all the things that I didn’t have. That’s why I’m sorry. I’m sorry because you shouldn’t have to be everything to me. I had you, but I’d forgotten that I had myself too.
Marie Lu
From what I could see, men or women, children or adults, young or aged, rich or poor, war was making everyone equal.
Alephonsion Deng
I still had this idea that there was a whole world of marvelous golden people somewhere, as far ahead of me as the seniors at Rye when I was in the sixth grade; people who knew everything instinctively, who made their lives work out the way they wanted without even trying, who never had to make the best of a bad job because it never occured to them to do anything less then perfectly the first time. Sort of heroic super-people, all of them beautiful and witty and calm and kind, and I always imagined that when I did find them I'd suddenly know that I Belonged among them, that I was one of them, that I'd been meant to be one of them all along, and everything in teh meantime had been a mistake; and they'd know it too. I'd be like the ugly duckling among the swans.
Richard Yates
All varieties of the producers' policy are advocated on the ground of their alleged ability to raise the party members' standard of living. Protectionism and economic self-sufficiency, labor union pressure and compulsion, labor legislation, minimum wage rates, public spending, credit expansion, subsidies, and other makeshifts are always recommended by their advocates as the most suitable or the only means to increase the real income of the people for whose votes they canvass. Every contemporary statesman or politician invariably tells his voters: My program will make you as affluent as conditions may permit, while my adversaries' program will bring you want and misery.
Ludwig von Mises
I bet you've seen the fundamentalist bumper sticker that says, "God said it! I believe it! That settles it!" It must be a typo because what the driver really means is, "I said it! God believes it! That settles it!
Robert M. Price
Divorce is a game played by lawyers.
Cary Grant
there used to be, dirtside, a legal defenses called "diminished capacity" and "not guilty by reason on insanity." These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity to even think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity - but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they kill him. Now. Fast. Brutally.
Robert A. Heinlein
Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.
Roy T. Bennett
She has given me a way out.
Alison Bechdel
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau