Quotes by American Authors - Page 2525

When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him.
Norman Vincent Peale
The last thing the consumer index wants men and women to do is to figure out how to love one another: The $1.5 trillion retail-sales industry depends on sexual estrangement between men and women, and is fueled by sexual dissatisfaction. Ads do not sell sex--that would be counterproductive, if it meant that heterosexual women and men turned to one another and were gratified. What they sell is sexual discontent.
Naomi Wolf
But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight.
Julia Child
Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all of the tricks and has nothing to say.
Raymond Chandler
What’s secretly in the water of modern culture is that people enter the world empty. That’s a very dangerous idea,because if everybody’s empty than other people can get us to do whatever they want because there’s nothing in us to stand against it. But if we came to do something that’s meaningful, that involves giving and making the world a more beautiful, healthy, lively place, then you become a difficult person to move around and manipulate.
Michael Meade
The problems on campus life today are not about free speech. They are about how the students have absolutely nothing to do with their lives but sit and listen to lectures, find the best parties to attend, and otherwise discover first-world problems to stew about and protest. That's the root of the problem. This is not a commercial environment where people are incentivized to find value in each other. Campuses have become completely artificial 4-year holding tanks for infantilized kids with zero experience in actual life in which people find ways to get along. These students are not serving each other in a market exchange, and very few have worked at day in their lives, so their default is to find some offense and protest. It's all they've been taught to do and all they know how to do. Idle hands and parents' money = trouble.
Jeffrey Tucker
There is no pretending," Jace said with absolute clarity. "I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.
Cassandra Clare
This is a wonderful day,” Anthony was muttering to himself. “A wonderful day.” He looked up sharply at Gareth. “You don’t have sisters, do you?”“None,” Gareth confirmed.“I am in possession of four,” Anthony said, tossing back at least a third of the contents of his glass. “Four. And now they’re all off my hands. I’m done,” he said, looking as if he might break into a jig at any moment. “I’m free.”“You’ve daughters, don’t you?” Gareth could not resist reminding him.“Just one, and she’s only three. I have years before I have to go through this again. If I’m lucky, she’ll convert to Catholicism and become a nun.Gareth choked on his drink.“It’s good, isn’t it?” Anthony said, looking at the bottle. “Aged twenty-four years.”“I don’t believe I’ve ever ingested anything quite so ancient,” Gareth murmured.
Julia Quinn
Watch it, loincloth, I’m not afraid to spork your eyes out.
Magan Vernon
Here's to the future, he said and lifted the glass to his mouth. There was a lump of regret stuck in his throat as he spoke the words, but he washed it down with the whiskey.
Bette Lee Crosby
I love dipping into dreams and sinuously sinking into sleep. It's the freest place to be. The possibilities are limitless and my imagination becomes a weightless wonder.
Jaeda DeWalt
The malpractice for advice-giving is like five times as much as a craniotomy.
Nicole Krauss
But she had dreamed of being his for too long. He had quite ruined her for a marriage of convenience. She wanted everything from him: his mind, his body, his name and, most of all, his heart.
Sarah MacLean
If you dont love somebody, it gets annoying if they tell you what to do or what to feel. When you love them, you get pleasure from their pleasure nad it makes it easy to serve. I didnt love God because i didnt know God. universe is not effected by time. Light exists outside of time.. It is still a mystery to physicists.
Donald Miller
The story of Psyche finally made sense to him- why a mortal girl would be so afraid. Why would she risk breaking the rules to look the god of love in the face, because she feared he might be a mo
Rick Riordan
We are always imagining something, It is practically impossible to be awake without imagining something. Then why not imagine something at all times that will inspire the powers within us to do greater and greater things?
Christian D. Larson
Success is a journey, not a destination.
Ben Sweetland
Desiring the exhilarations of changes: The motive for metaphor, shrinking fromThe weight of primary noon ...
Wallace Stevens
remembering and forgiving can be contrary things
Marilynne Robinson
She glanced outside at the sky, filled with clouds and smog. All the pollution, all that hell—even the stars didn’t stand a chance.
Katherine McIntyre
One of the real reasons that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is so intent on remaining loyal to Syria’s Dictator Bashar Al-Assad, is that in January 2017, Russia and Syria signed a lease to extend Russia's control of its naval facility in the port of Tartus, Syria for 49 years. As with the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba, the Russians have sovereign rights over the territory, considered a Material-Technical Support Point and not technically a naval base. The piers are large enough to accommodate four medium-sized vessels but not any of their larger ships of the line, including cruisers or their aircraft carrier. The facility which gives Russia a warm water port, consists of office space, two storage buildings, barracks and a parking garage for about six vehicles. Under the terms of this lease agreement, the Russians also operate Khmeimim Air Base located south-east of the city of Latakia, Syria. The present lease for these military facilities has an extension clause for an additional 25 years.
Captain Hank Bracker
We can make our own plans and judge them by our narrow expectations, or we can experience life as the boundless reality of the One who created it.
Holly Sprink
As women are altering their traditional role expressions, men are developing new responses to the transformed women. Old patterns are no longer acceptable, and new sets of expectations and roles are now required of them.
Demetra George
Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right.
Woody Allen
A great ring of pure & endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heartAnd breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.The end of all is hinted in the start.When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;Around us life & death are torn apart,Yet a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.It lights the world to my delight.Infinity is present in each part.A loving smile contains all art.The motes of starlight spark & dart.A grain of sand holds power & might.Infinity is present in each part,And a great ring of pure and endless lightDazzles the darkness in my heart.
Madeleine L'Engle
My memory is coming back. It is curious how it comes. Each day, a rush of pieces, loosely connected, unimportant bits, snake through me. They click, click, click into my brain, like links being snapped together. And then they are done. A small chain of memories that fill in one tiny part of my life. They come out of nowhere, and most are not important.
Mary E. Pearson
Every emotion we feel is like one drop of rain in our heart. When our heart rain starts to overflow, it leaks out the window to our soul as a tear.
Lisa Mischelle Wood
Fear is the illusion that I have some control over the bad things that might happen to me.
Michael Treanor
I have wanted you for so long now,” he said roughly, “I’ve no memory of how it feels to be devoid of the craving. But you must know what you do. I need you to think of who you are and where you are and who I am. Think of how things will be once we’ve crossed this threshold. Think of how you will leave this cabin—disheveled and well fucked.
Sylvia Day
What you are afraid of is never as bad as what you imagine. The fear you let build up in your mind is worse than the situation that actually exists.
Spencer Johnson
I believe in good and evil," said Jem. "And I believe the soul is eternal. But I don't believe in the fiery pit, the pitchforks, or endless torment. I do not believe you can threaten people into goodness."Tessa looked at will. "What about you? What do you believe?"Pulvis et umbra sumus," said Will, not looking at her as he spoke. "I believe we are dust and shadows. What else is there?
Cassandra Clare
I try to avoid teaming up with goddesses who eat roadkill. It's one of my personal boundaries.
Rick Riordan
In true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our companions will be given to us by grace. Often they will be persons who will upset our settled view of self and world. In fact, we might define true community as that place where the person you least want to live with lives….Community will teach us that our grip on truth is fragile and incomplete, that we need many ears o hear the fullness of God’s word for our lives. And the disappointments of community life can be transformed by our discovery that the only dependable power for life lies beyond all human structures and relationships.In this religious grounding lies the only real hedge against the risk of disappointment in seeking community. That risk can be borne only if it is not community one seeks, but truth, light, God. Do not commit yourself to community, but commit yourself to God…In that commitment you will find yourself drawn into community.Parker Palmer, A Place Called Community, 1977
Parker J. Palmer
Vampires aren’t noble?”t“No. We serve or we prey.”t“Like monks?”tHe frowned, confused, and then gave a soft chuckle. “Prey, as in hunt. No God would hear our prayers.
Erin Kellison
It's hard not to be a fighter when you're constantly under siege.
Cassandra Duffy
It’s like I need to love you to come back whole from where I sometimes go.
Robert B. Parker
To this day, being able to “take advantage” of someone is the measure in my mind of having a parent. For me and Lindsay, the fear of imposing stalked our minds, infecting even the food we ate. We recognized instinctively that many of the people we depended on weren’t supposed to play that role in our lives, so much so that it was one of the first things Lindsay thought of when she learned of Papaw’s death. We were conditioned to feel that we couldn’t really depend on people—that, even as children, asking someone for a meal or for help with a broken-down automobile was a luxury that we shouldn’t indulge in too much lest we fully tap the reservoir of goodwill serving as a safety valve in our lives.
J.D. Vance
To be confronted with a simple and unqualified evil is no doubt a kind of luxury....
Richard Hofstadter
Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is--and a woman too, I guess.
John Steinbeck
To the attention of the New Fiddleham Police Department: You've got my middle-C, and I would like it back....Please return Jackaby's tuning fork. He's getting even more obnoxious than usual.
William Ritter
The tiny space, the toilet, two hundred strangers just a few inches away, it's so exciting, the lack of room to maneuver, it helps if you're double-jointed. Use your imagination. Some creativity and a few simple stretching exercises and you can be knock, knock, knockin' on heaven's door. You'll be amazed how time flies.
Chuck Palahniuk
Rafael?””Yeah?”„Do we all have monsters?”„Yes.”„Why does God give us so many monsters?”„You want to know my theory?”„Sure.”„I think it’s other people who give us monsters. Maybe God doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Christopher Nolan
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
Abraham Lincoln
It is what you are inside that matters. You yourself are your only real capital.
Vladimir Zworykin
Story, it turns out, is the assassin of despair.
Robin Cody
At any rate, during the few hours when the depressive state itself eased off long enough to permit the luxury of concentration, I had recently filled this vacuum with fairly extensive reading and I had absorbed many fascinating and troubling facts
William Styron
Only your life's work , driven by passion, will last forever.
Julieanne O'Connor
We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.
Lev Grossman
The past is a ghost, the future a dream and all we ever have is now.
Bill Cosby
War is more than battles, and battles are more than violence.
Lance Conrad
Writing a novel is a bit like being Daniel Boone. An author stands atop a ridge in a mountain range and can generally see a number of peaks in the distance. What lies between those peaks—the dales and glens, rivers, forests, and other features that distinguish one mountain landscape from another... is where the artistry and intrigue of the writing process lives. As the writer sets out into the story, leaving behind those high points—the beginning, a twist here and there, the climax, and, if perhaps a bit indistinct for the distance to cover, the end—entering the vale below, all manner of things can happen the writer never intended or expected at the onset.
Brett Armstrong
Love is always a miracle, everywhere,every time. But for us, it's a little different. I don't want to say it's more miraculous...Our miracle is different because people say it's impossible.
John Green
Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom.
Thomm Quackenbush
The battle with Men Who Explain Things has trampled down many women — of my generation, of the up-and-coming generation we need so badly, here and in Pakistan and Bolivia and Java, not to speak of the countless women who came before me and were not allowed into the laboratory, or the library, or the conversation, or the revolution, or even the category called human.
Rebecca Solnit
Darkness fell, revealing a sparkling night sky so beautiful that we decided to sleep out under the stars. At gray dawn, Phyllis woke me with an urgent voice. “Bill, Bill,” she said, “when I woke up I saw this huge boulder beside me, but it wasn’t there last night. Look! Look!” she said and pointed next to her. It was the huge buffalo bull! He had come back during the night and lay down beside us to sleep. I was awestruck. I felt so honored, so grateful, so loved. I loved that buffalo with all my heart and soul. I felt like he knew it, and that was why he had come back to sleep with us. But maybe there’s a different reason. Judith Niles, a wise spiritual friend of mine recently told me that the spontaneous melody is “the voice of the soul.” The minute she said it I knew she was right. Now I feel sure that the creatures responded to “the voice of the soul” amplified through my body. When we human beings finally get it together the natural world is going to respond to us in more wonderful ways than we can ever begin to imagine.
William "Billy" Packer
If toes had eyes,then I could seehow my feet know where to go,but toes are blind.And how is it that my tonguespeaks words it cannot hear?Because for all its eloquence,the tongue itself is deaf,and flaps in soundlessness.
Jane Roberts
As we embrace the mystery of love, we see that it contains not an absence of error, but the presence of grace. It contains not the absence of anger or pain, but the presence of forgiveness and healing. Not the absence of disharmony or confusion, but the presence of peace and clarity.To make a home into a sanctuary, we must be willing to make room in our hearts for one another's limitations, as well as our gifts. For it is here in this sacred space of the home and family, so brimming with life, so full of every emotion available to our hearts, that we learn what it means to love within all the nuances of an intimate relationship.
Shea Darian
I am not a Virginian but an American.
Patrick Henry
The best sex and the most satisfying sex are not the same. I have had great sex with men who were intimate terrorists, men who seduce and attract by giving you just what you feel your heart needs then gradually or abruptly withholding it once they have gained your trust. And I have been deeply sexually fulfilled in bonds with loving partners who have had less skill and know-how. Because of sexist socialization, women tend to put sexual satisfaction in its appropriate perspective. We acknowledge its value without allowing it to become the absolute measure of intimate connection. Enlightened women want fulfilling erotic encounters as much as men, but we ultimately prefer erotic satisfaction within a context where there is loving, intimate connection. If men were socialized to desire love as much as they are taught to desire sex, we would see a cultural revolution. As it stands, most men tend to be more concerned about sexual performance and sexual satisfaction than whether they are capable of giving and receiving love.
Bell Hooks