Quotes by American Authors - Page 2500

What is it like.... what is it like to be dead?' Evan looked at him with his dull, unblinking blue eyes, ' I don't know, what is it like...... to be alive?
Daniel Waters
It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for being naive, but isn't that refreshing next to the whiny navel-gazing that came after it?
Amanda DeWees
Your passion sustains you. Your purpose is why you were created. Follow your passion but ensure you fulfill your purpose.
Kemi Sogunle
Look for Miracles
S.A.R.K.
Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects— that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me— I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron.
Vladimir Nabokov
Nothing will work unless you do.
Maya Angelou
I didn't like anything. Maybe I was afraid. That was it - I was afraid. I wanted to sit alone in a room with the shades down. I feasted upon that. I was a crank. I was a lunatic.
Charles Bukowski
It was uncertain. She was in her early forties. Breast cancer. No one could identify exactly how everyone had come to know this fact. Was it a fact? Some people called it rumor. But in fact there was no such thing as rumor. There was fact, and there was what did not come up in conversation.
Joshua Ferris
Jess is too big for her skin, as if she might float away in the exhilarating possibility of the moment.
C.B. Lee
Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, ‘inhale great draughts of space,’ wonder, wonder at the wind’s unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands…
Helen Keller
Only those who have tasted the bitterest of the bitter can become people who stand out among others. -Guanchang Xianxing Ji
Matthew Polly
He got up and ran on, pitching himself down the hill, flying through the branches of the firs, leaping roots and rocks without seeing them. As he went, the hill got steeper and steeper, until it was really like falling. He was going too fast and he knew when he came to a stop, it would involve crashing into something, and shattering pain.Only as he went on, picking up speed all the time, until with each leap he seemed to sail through yards of darkness, he felt a giddy surge of emotion, a sensation that might have been panic but felt strangely like exhilaration. He felt as if at any moment his feet might leave the ground and never come back down. He knew this forest, this darkness, this night. He knew his chances: not good. He knew what was after him. It had been after him all his life. He knew where he was - in a story about to unfold an ending. He knew better than anyone how these stories went, and if anyone could find their way out of these woods, it was him.("Best New Horror")
Joe Hill
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
Herman Wouk
If they knew how much you kept inside to keep from hurting them, but hurting yourself instead, maybe they’d love you more.
Darnell Lamont Walker
I’m convinced that one of the most powerful forces on earth is the prayer of a child.
Wess Stafford
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed- it is a process of elimination.
Elbert Hubbard
The highest freedom of mind comes from becoming non-judgmental.
Debasish Mridha
Ultimately, you are defined by your kindness, compassion, passion, and choice.
Debasish Mridha
The end. But I'm telling you now, if either of you breathe a word -one goddamn word- about Cate, I will come down on you so hard, they'll be naming hurricanes after me for a fucking century.
Alexandra Bracken
When I was girl by Nilus stream I watched the deserts stars arise; My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx, Learned all his dreaming from eyes. I bore in Greece a burning name, And I have been in Italy Madonna to a painter-lad, And mistress to a Medici. And have you heard (and I have heard) Of puzzled men with decorous mien, Who judged - the wench knew far too much - And burnt her on the Salem green?
Adelaide Crapsey
You hate America, don't you?' 'That would be as silly as loving it,' I said. 'It's impossible for me to get emotional about it, because real estate doesn't interest me. It's no doubt a great flaw in my personality, but I can't think in terms of boundaries. Those imaginary lines are as unreal to me as elves and pixies. I can't believe that they mark the end or the beginning of anything of real concern to a human soul. Virtues and vices, pleasures and pains cross boundaries at will.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Do what you love. Know your own bone gnaw at it bury it unearth it and gnaw it still.
Henry David Thoreau
You can know something is a lie when it has no love in it.
Bryant McGill
I was a modern young woman, fearless and capable (with mace spray in my robe’s right pocket), and I didn’t care who knew it. Attitude was everything when dealing with dwarfs.
Erik Bundy
When faith replaces fear, the gates open for you to receive enough money, optimal health, and genuine relationships.
Charles F. Glassman
She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.
Louisa May Alcott
It was as if I had only just been able to see colours and shapes for the first time. I was so enthralled with the buttons on Lestat's black coat that I looked at nothing else for a long time.
Anne Rice
Banks frown when employees torch the home of their principal account holder.
Kathy Bryson
Depression means self-loathing, self-disgust, and the kind of emotional numbness that feels like psychic death.
William Deresiewicz
Silent is the ruined land.Man is brutaland the rain does not wash awaythe painor rid the distant memory.It makes it glisten.
Cecil Castellucci
Lucy had to guard her reputation - her reputation for sanity - the way that a woman a hundred years before would have had to guard her reputation for virtue.
Nancy Werlin
Everybody's weird, fundamentally everybody is a snap. Sometimes it's a sexual thing and sometimes it's a different kind of weirdness, but one way or another everybody's nuts.
Lawrence Block
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
Saul Bellow
Have you ever seen someone buy a piece of furniture or clothing from New York, Chicago or London? Even though the exact same product was available right down the street at a local retailer for a fraction of the cost? This kind of phenomenon is referred to as ‘The expert from afar’ enticement that enraptures the naïve with the idea that things distant and far removed have more value because of the popularity of their location or the pedigree of the presenter. They often neglect to seek resources locally that offer the same product or practical wisdom, and do not employ the benefits of direct first hand observation to test the efficacy of what can be found close by within arm’s length. Instead they venture afar without looking at what is often right in front of them, invisible because of proximity.However, invisibility has its own value too. It allows one to carry on unnoticed, and go merrily about your own successful way.
Michael Delaware
you fix what you can fix and you let the rest go. If there ain't nothin to be done about it it aint even a problem. It's just a aggravation.
Cormac McCarthy
Welcome to Hartford. The poorest city in the wealthiest state in the richest country on earth.
Susan Eaton
Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happen. And if you’re bad, you can still be lucky.
Barbara Kingsolver
I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.
William Faulkner
Jesus came to serve, and He wants you to follow His example.
Jim George
Sethe, he says, "me and you, we got more yesterday than anybody. We need some kind of tomorrow."He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe, You are." His holding fingers are holding hers. "Me? Me?
Toni Morrison
Watching a make-out while wrapped in a blanket with a guy she wanted to make out with made her feel exposed. Obvious. Transparent. Like her thoughts were flashing before his eyes.Finally Brett managed to pull away without consent of Bekka's lips. The confusion created a sloppy bite-a-juicy-peach sound. Everyone cringed.
Lisi Harrison
The secret of success in life is the persistent practice of making choices.
Debasish Mridha
There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.
Dean Koontz
Though Argaven might be neither sane nor shrewd, he had had long practice in the evasions and challenges and rhetorical subtleties used in conversation by those whose main aim in life was the achievement and maintenance of the shifgrethor relationship on a high level.
Ursula K Le Guin
If you take you away from me, you take everything.
Adriana Locke
True self-confidence never needs to degrade the confidence of others in order to grow and survive. If it does, it’s not confidence at all…it’s ego.
Charles F. Glassman
Nothing renews my faith in humanity more than the exchange of compassion so profound that mere words cannot embrace it.
Tiffany Madison
It is our responsibility to discover our talents, to accept them as from God, to develop them through education and training, and to use them for His glory.
J. Grant Howard
Anger is just anger. It isn't good. It isn't bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It's like anything else. You can use it to build or to destroy. You just have to make the choice."Constructive anger," the demon said, her voice dripping sarcasm. Also known as passion," I said quietly. "Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there was savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful.
Jim Butcher
I know a man who drives 600 yards to work. I know a woman who gets in her car to go a quarter of a mile to a college gymnasium to walk on a treadmill, then complains passionately about the difficulty of finding a parking space. When I asked her once why she didn't walk to the gym and do five minutes less on the treadmill, she looked at me as if I were being willfully provocative. 'Because I have a program for the treadmill,' she explained. 'It records my distance and speed, and I can adjust it for degree of difficulty.' It hadn't occurred to me how thoughtlessly deficient nature is in this regard.
Bill Bryson
Speed is not always a constituent to great work, the process of creation should be given time and thought.
E.A. Bucchianeri
When you understand, that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.
Chuck Palahniuk
College is a different scene than it was ten years ago. It used to be all about sex and drugs. Now it’s all about texting and fast food.
Aaron B. Powell
Celebrate the success of others and they will be happy to see you succeed.
Susan C.Young
Someday the sun is going to shine down on me in some faraway place.
Mahalia Jackson
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
Duke Ellington
One lesson I've learned--worry doesn't change tomorrow, it only robs today of its joy."-Charley
Irene Hannon
If you love something, let it go…
Karen Shreck
How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?
Jodi Picoult
When we are children, play comes to us naturally, but our capacity for play collapses as we age. Sex often remains the last arena of play we can permit ourselves, a bridge to our childhood. Long after the mind has been filled with injunctions to be serious, the body remains a free zone, unencumbered by reason and judgment. In lovemaking, we can recapture the utterly uninhibited movement of the child, who has not yet developed self-consciousness before the judging gaze of others.
Esther Perel