Quotes by American Authors - Page 2512

Having bad experiences sometimes helps; it makes it clearer what it is youshould be doing. I know that sounds very Pollyannaish but it’s true. People who have had only good experiences aren’t very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren’t very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well—it’s easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is necessarily simple. But I don’t think you’re going to have a life like that, and I think you’ll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. You mustn’t let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift—a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless.
Peter Cameron
In the evenings the family gathered at Kirkwood Hall. Sometimes Andrew cooked, sometimes Delphine. There was a bounty of vegetables from the kitchen garden: tiny patty-pan squash, radishes both peppery and sweet, beets striped deep magenta and white, golden and green, butter lettuce and spinach and peas, zucchini blossoms stuffed with Graham's mozzarella and salty anchovies. Delphine whipped eggs from the chickens into souffles. Chicken- from the chickens, sadly- were roasted in a Dutch oven or grilled under a brick. Plump strawberries from the fields and minuscule wild ones from the forest were served with a drizzle of balsamic syrup or a billow of whipped cream. Delphine's baking provided custardy tarts, flaky biscuits, and deep, dark chocolate cake.
Ellen Herrick
Given that I don’t know anything, when I am making up stories about the future, why not make it a good story instead of a scary one?
Sharon Weil
Love, he realized, was like the daggers he made in his forge: When you first got one it was shiny and new and the blade glinted bright in the light. Holding it against your palm, you were full of optimism for what it would be like in the field, and you couldn't wait to try it out. Except those first couple of nights out were usually awkward as you got used to it and it got used to you.Over time, the steel lost its brand-new gleam, and the hilt became stained, and maybe you nicked the shit out of the thing a couple of times. What you got in return, however, saved your life: Once the pair of you were well acquainted, it became such a part of you that it was an extension of your own arm. It protected you and gave you a means to protect your brothers; it provided you with the confidnece and the power to face whatever came out of the night; and wherever you went, it stayed with you, right over your heart, always there when you needed it.You had to keep the blade up, however. And rewrap the hilt from time to time. And double-check the weight. when it came to weapons. Why hadn't it dawned on him that matings were the same?(From the thoughts of Vishous)
J.R. Ward
Our learned egocentric and judgmental consciousness is the source of unhappiness; however, universal consciousness is always blissful.
Debasish Mridha
Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
Gail Devers
In March the soft rains continued, and each storm waited courteously until its predecessor sunk beneath the ground.
John Steinbeck
Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.
Chuck Palahniuk
I love you, Louise Downe McCord. You drive me absolutely crazy sometimes, and this is one of those times, but I love you.
Maggie Osborne
She looked out and saw a tall and comely woman beckoning to her. Susannah's first look at Mia in the flesh astounded her, because the chap's mother was *white.* Apparently Odetta-that-was now had a Caucasian side to her personality and how that must frost Detta Walker's racially sensitive butt!
Stephen King
What I like best about traveling is exploring new places, cultures, and cuisines, and learning to look at the world through a different lens. Travel really is the world’s best teacher. And actually, veganism offers the same thing. Becoming vegan completely changed my worldview and enabled me to connect with nature and with my fellow earthlings in a way I never had before. By combining travel with veganism, I’m able to view the world through a whole new window and experience places in a way that most other tourists don’t.
Wendy Werneth
People tell you that you cannot, because they do not.
Tim Fargo
The Open Road goes to the used-car lot.
Louis Simpson
Within you right now is the power to do things you never dreamed possible. This power becomes available to you just as soon as you can change your beliefs.
Maxwell Maltz
I, Larry Vail, do hereby confessTo murdering Merry in her little dress.To strangling and raping and making a mess.To all of these charges the answer is yes.
Rosalyn Drexler
The mystery of Evil and its origin & purposes".~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
He had memorized the entire Qur'an and lectured on the nature of evil, which, like a shadow, cannot exist independently of the good silhouettes.
Anthony Marra
To me, a king is a lighthouse. A guide who can cast his glow across his kingdom and bring every last one of us out of the shadows. A beacon who we can look up to when the world seems lost. A bridge who can unite us when our differences seem to stark to reconcile. Tonight, we need a king who is all of those things. A king who can look each of you in the eye and make you feel that you won't just fight for him or his kingdom, but you'll fight for our way of life.
Soman Chainani
Hanging out is good historical methodology.
Jean Pfaelzer
You're right, my problems are the biggest problems ever," George said. "No, honestly, it's horrible to be me. I'm rich, talented, and I make girls cry.""How do you make girls cry, exactly?"George turned to her. His blue eyes widened. His lovely face took on a forlorn, deeply troubled expression. He leaned forward, and, in a theatrical whisper, said, "My past is tragic. I wouldn't want to burden you with it. It's a pain I must suffer alone. In the rain. In silence.
Ilona Andrews
The stars could fall - the moon could crash from the heavens - and Mariko could not care.
Renee Ahdieh
I believe that Jesus would have given His life for just one person. Jesus emptied Himself, He humbled Himself and He so yielded Himself to His Father's love that He had no ambition of His own. He was not looking to build an empire, He did not want praise or adulation or to impress people with who or how many followed Him. He stopped over and over again for just one person, for just one life.
Heidi Baker
Why did you tell me all this?""So if I die, you'd know not to come looking for me when you get to heaven.
Lorraine Heath
I won't say that all senior citizens who can't master technology should be publicly flogged, but if we made an example of one or two, it might give the others incentive to try harder.
Chuck Lorre
When emotions turn and stay sour, when thoughts become cynical and judgmental, good and compassionate treatment is on the line. Helpers who become sour and cynical tend to begrudge their high need clients for their neediness. There is a risk that helpers become too well-practiced at taking a bleak view of those they have avowed to assist. There is a temptation to begin to blame clients for their failure to improve. If treatment ends pre-maturely, with either a client never returning to treatment or a helper 'firing' them out of frustration, there is a tendency for the client to take the fall. Of course what we are talking about here are signs of burnout.
Scott E. Spradlin
A computer search would have given me a list of pertinent cases, but without that I had to read everything. That is harder by far, but you end up learning a lot more. I was forced to remember cases because making copies of everything was too expensive. Keeping cases in your head is good, too, because cases are like puzzle pieces floating around in your mind, and sometimes, in moments of creativity, they fall into place and form a picture. If they were words on a screen that you could pull up anytime you wished, that phenomenon wouldn't happen as easily.
Shon Hopwood
I felt after I finished Slaughterhouse-Five that I didn’t have to write at all anymore if I didn’t want to. It was the end of some sort of career. I don’t know why, exactly. I suppose that flowers, when they’re through blooming, have some sort of awareness of some purpose having been served. Flowers didn’t ask to be flowers and I didn’t ask to be me. At the end of Slaughterhouse-Five…I had a shutting-off feeling…that I had done what I was supposed to do and everything was OK .
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Children accept many things adults will not accept, since the world of a child is a constant revelation without any need for knowledge of cause and effect. ("Miss Esperson")
August Derleth
Spring is nature's way of saying "Let's party!"
Robin Williams
A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
Katherine Graham
Please don't sing and dance," I whisper, but it's too late. He's snapping his fingers and doing this sexy groove to the music. It should look really stupid - and it kind of does - but with his tight abs and his tattoos and piercings, it's really just...precious.
C.M. Stunich
She had blue eyes, but his were BLUE. Not just one shade of blue, either, but a swirl of shades that reminded her of the stretch of ocean between Bella Vita Isle and Nassau where the turquoise waters fell into a deep, fathomless blue.
Emily March
I wish sometimes that the gods would either choose better, or make their wishes clearer
Jacqueline Carey
Thanksgiving is not some formulaic action based on a tedious ledger that neatly tallies everything I have received so I can determine if being thankful is warranted or not. Rather, it’s appreciating the fact that I have already received the privilege of living life which in and of itself will fill the whole of my ledger for the whole of my life.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
Helen Keller
— Why did blondes vote for Clinton? — They didn't know how to read and thought she can make their life hilarious!
Bryanna Reid
All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.
Robin Sloan
Rather than seek happiness living my life to please the will of others, I will seek happiness where I know it can be found - living my life to please the will of my heart.
Scott Stabile
There's a very generous donation in the parish's future if you make this fast. Ten minutes, at the most."Frowning, the man fumbled open his liturgy. "There's an established rite, Your Grace. Marriage must be entered into with solemnity and consideration. I don't know that I can rush--""Ten minutes. One thousand guineas."The liturgy snapped closed. "Then again, what do a few extra minutes signify to an eternal God?" He beckoned Amelia with a fluttering, papery hand. "Make haste, child. You're about to be married.
Tessa Dare
It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called 'mopping up.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Fabulous" Jack said, reaching down and plucking a crimson flower. A small scream sounded from it as he severed the stem. He smiled maliciously, then started stomping with abandon through the beds of blossoms, a chorus of tinny, shrill screams punctuating every step.
Kiersten White
(LBJ) had what a journalist calls “a genius for analogy”— made the point unforgettably, in dialect, in the rhythmic cadences of a great storyteller. Master of the senate
Robert A. Caro
I have my welcome mat turned around backwards so when people leave they think they’re going to a better place.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
And whatever it is that keeps widening your heart that's Mary too not only the power inside you but the love. And when you get down to it Lily that's the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love - but to persist in love.
Sue Monk Kidd
...I had always believed that I left a bit of me wherever I went. I also believed that I took a bit of every place with me. I never felt that more than with this trip. It was as if the act of touching these places, walking these roads,and asking these questions had added another column to my being. And the only possible explanation I could find for that feeling was that a spirit existed in many of the places I visited, and a spirit existed in me and the two had somehow met in the course of my travels. It's as if the godliness of the land and the godliness of my being had fused.
Bruce Feiler
What you say reflects how you feel about the world.
Debasish Mridha
Religion is the opium of the poor
Ernest Hemingway
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller
[Jules] slides into a seat beside me with her hot lunch tray, sighing. “Four hours, thirty-six minutes, and twelve seconds till we’re out of purgatory for the weekend.”“Maybe later,” I murmur, still distracted by the day’s previous events.“So, let me show you how a conversation works. I say something, and then you say something back that actually relates to what I was talking about, as if you were even the least bit interested.” “Huh?” I say.
Jodi Picoult
What if I said, there was a way
Noah P. Woodward
If you want a good friend, you need to be a good friend!
Elizabeth George
Kindness solves more problems than diplomacy, wealth, intelligence, clout, force, law, and dominion combined.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Everyone around you becomes kind and loving when you express your kindness and beauty of love.
Debasish Mridha
I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy.
Charles Bukowski
His biggest gripe with religion was the concept of heaven, of paradise, that we could only get there after we died. He said any philosophy that cared more about life after death than life before death wasn’t anything he could believe in. That’s why he called this farm Paradise. He said Paradise was ours if we wanted it. It was ours to make in the here and now, not something out there in the future that we had to wait for.
Tiffany Reisz
For mankind knows hardly a joy which will surpass that of approval of his work.
Ernest Vincent Wright
Son of a beast tried to bite me when I turned my back to the billets!"...Nostrils flaring and ears pinned, the grey repeated the offense. "He wants another go at it. Be a sport ol' man!" Robert chortled. The indignant Scotsman threw the reins in his face, tromping off to collect the major's horse."I wonder was it reward or punishment Winthrop had in mind in allowing you to keep that brute?" Drake innocently inquired."He only eats Scotsman," Robert quipped.
Emery Lee
Once started, love couldn't easily be stopped.
Larry McMurtry
They plan and they fix and they do, and then some kitchen-dwelling fiend slips a scorchy, soggy, tasteless mess into their pots and pans…So when the bread didn’t rise, and the fish wasn’t quite done at the bone, and the rice was scorched, he slapped Janie until she had a ringing sound in her ears and told her about her brains before he stalked on back to the store.
Zora Neale Hurston
The bats stop flying above and the moon stands still. He commands the air and the sky and my body.
Eliza Freed