Quotes by American Authors - Page 2535

When people see you're happy doing what you're doing, it sort of takes the power away from them to tease you about it.
Wendy Mass
The conversation limped along this line of thought much like a zombie: lifeless and mindless and making a jelly of whatever healthy brains were within its reach.
Steve Hockensmith
The essence of the Marine Corps experience, I decided, was pain.
Philip Caputo
You know I'm old in some ways-in others-well, I'm just a little girl. I like sunshine and pretty things and cheerfulness-and I dread responsibility.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
We employ education and the convictions gained through the intermeshing of personal experiences and fresh ideas to establish the configuration of our being that in actuality was our mysterious potentiality from the very inception of our birth.
Kilroy J. Oldster
To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
Bill Bryson
I had everything I could possibly want -- yet I was failing to appreciate it. Bogged down in petty complaints and passing crises, weary of struggling with my own nature, I too often failed to comprehend the splendor of what I had.
Gretchen Rubin
A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.
Norman Cousins
Doubt is the only reliable source of creativity.
Peter Tieryas
My father didn't tell me how to live;he lived, and let me watch him do it
Clarence Budington Kelland
The only good thing about having your back to the wall is that it makes it really easy to choose which way you're going to go.
Jim Butcher
Stop!” she screamed. “Don’t hurt him.”“Back off!” Billy shouted.She yanked harder on Billy’s arm.“He isn’t a vampire anymore, idiot. Look! Do you see that big, yellow thing up in the sky? That’s called the sun. It’s shining down on him, and he isn’t exploding. His fangs are gone. He’s as human as we are. Case closed.”Billy stared up at the sky, his jaw slack. “Not possible.”Jack mumbled, “They don’t call me Jackpot for nothing.”“What?” Billy blinked at him.“Private joke.
Kasi Blake
The mind can fool the heart, as the heart can fool the mind.
Anthony Liccione
It is easier to act your way into a better feeling than to feel your way into a better way of acting. When certain feelings hinder you, look for other feelings to feel. Supplant your fear with a greater motivation. The more frequently we feel and do not act, the less often we will feel. Act genially in the face of rancor; you may be the only angel in that person’s life. What you practice projecting you are projecting and you become.
Kare Anderson
Identity is your role in life, the part you play. Individuality is who you are, and who you are is revealed to you if you can get to complete presence.
Tom Spanbauer
Writing unlocks the heart, mind and soul that we may be receptive to God's blessings.
Peggy Toney Horton
I couldn't say, "I lost the best thing that ever happened to me." Wasn't that punishment enough?
Bryn Greenwood
Every destructive emotion bears its own harvest, but anger’s fruit is the most bitter of all.
Billy Graham
That One Who is greater than us is near - nearer than we could measure.
Amy Layne Litzelman
Nothing safe is worth the drive.
Taylor Swift
Problem, purpose, conflict, goal. Use them. Think about them while you are in the planning phase of your novel; keep these elements at the back of your mind to guide you while you write. When you have written a scene, make sure they are all there, or that if one or another is missing, it is intentional and the effect is what you want.
Phyllis A. Whitney
The noise around us determines how we speak. And how we listen. Just as a conversation suffers in a war zone, art suffers in a culture built on noise. So does our enjoyment of it.
Michael Gungor
The single most sacred pilgrimage you will ever make is the one right where you are.
Molly Kate Brown
I am ewe to your ram. How can I call myself a man anymore?""The penis is a dead giveaway.
Jill Knowles
If abuses are destroyed, man must destroy them. If slaves are freed, man must free them. If new truths are discovered, man must discover them. If the naked are clothed; if the hungry are fed; if justice is done; if labor is rewarded; if superstition is driven from the mind; if the defenseless are protected and if the right finally triumphs, all must be the work of man. The grand victories of the future must be won by man, and by man alone.
Robert G. Ingersoll
The consciousness inhabiting your body is exactly the same as the consciousness inhabiting my body. We are one. The delusion that we are separate beings comes from identifying with the world of form—with our names, our bodies, our roles, our beliefs, our thoughts, and all of the mental constructs that we have created; but even these are more connected to the universe than we realize.
Joseph P. Kauffman
I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.
Madonna
I don't really like this song," Emma had said."You told me it was your favourite.""It's beautiful. But it always makes me sad.""Why, love?" he'd asked gently. "It's about finding each other again. About someone coming home."Emma had lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him earnestly. "It's about losing someone, and having to wait until you're together in heaven.""There's nothing in the lyrics about heaven," he'd said."But that's what it means. I can't bear the idea of being separated from you, for a lifetime or a year or even a day. So you mustn't go to heaven without me.""Of course not," he had whispered. "It wouldn't be heaven without you.
Lisa Kleypas
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat The soldier's last tattoo No more on Life's parade shall meet The brave and fallen few. On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead.
Theodore O'Hara
I understand I've made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response. When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer.
Michael Finkel
If the condition of grief is nearly universal, its transactions are exquisitely personal.
Meghan O'Rourke
When I met Millie, she was a hugger. She hugged over everything. I didn’t. We came to an agreement that hugs are reserved for prolonged partings and death. That’s it. At least, I thought that was our agreement. It seems like she’s figured out how to steal hugs more frequently. Millie’s turned into a hit and run hugger.
H.M. Ward
They tell about a fifteen-year-old boy in an orphans' home who had an incurable stutter. One Sunday the minister was detained and the boy volunteered to say the prayer in his stead. He did it perfectly too without a single stutter. Later he explained "I don't stutter when I talk to God. He loves me."
Bennett Cerf
If not me then who? Confront evil!
Ken Poirot
If you put a money sign in front of your eyes, how will you see the world?
Debasish Mridha
Trust a crowd to look at the wrong end of a miracle every time.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
We don't have time for such uncertainty because it reliably breeds indecision, and indecision is one of the mothers of failure.
Dean Koontz
He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.
Cormac McCarthy
If it weren't for acid, you might not have an IPod, and you definitely would not have some of the best music in your IPod.
Bill Maher
When someone says "just saying" what they really mean is, "You would be a colossal idiot to not take my advice." (on Facebook)
Stephen Altrogge
Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul, I shall recall the memory of warm, sunny, late summer afternoons like this one, and be comforted greatly.
Peggy Toney Horton
Maggie scoffed. "Denial will not save you when Cupid's arrow find its mark.""If i see Cupid anywhere in the vicinity, I'm ripping his chubby little arms off." Vanda yanked the door open to Romatech.
Kerrelyn Sparks
I see what I did not see. I experience that which is outside my own experience. This is the magic of reading novels. This is the working out of the problem of illusion. I take a book off the shelf. I open it up and begin to read, and what I discover in its pages is real.
Siri Hustvedt
Numerous times throughout history, a single person has made a tremendous impact on the world. I don’t know why anyone would think that can’t still happen.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Sometimes what you want to do has to fail so you won't.
Margueritte Harmon Bro
And instead of dying Immediately after they shot him, he would go on to survive several days solely because of the cold that January. Maybe that's why we are drawn to those who posses the coldest of hearts ... In effort to survive. 
Bethany Brookbank
With true beauty, there is no illusion.
James Philip Head
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
Shirley Temple
There’s a small window of opportunity to apologize sometimes after you’ve terribly wronged someone. It closes. Sometimes forever, but it never opens wide enough again for a good breeze.
Darnell Lamont Walker
Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them.
Alan W. Watts
The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat.But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican. So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
Elbert Guillory
I don't believe in your God. And he sure as hell doesn't believe in me.
Max Hawthorne
You're so beautiful," said Alice. "I'm afraid of looking at you and not knowing who you are.""I think that even if you don't know who I am someday, you'll still know that I love you.""What if I see you, and I don't know that you're my daughter, and I don't know that you love me?""Then, I'll tell you that I do, and you'll believe me.
Lisa Genova
Love is the great intangible. In our nightmares, we can create beasts out of pure emotion. Hate stalks the streets with dripping fangs, fear flies down narrow alleyways on leather wings, and jealousy spins sticky webs across the sky. In daydreams, we can maneuver with poise, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure. But what dream state is love? 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
Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom.. and as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
Veronica Roth
Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them
Lemony Snicket
The old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy ... a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of 'solving Amy'. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebooks on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings.
Gillian Flynn
He singled out aspects of Quality such as unity, vividness, authority, economy, sensitivity, clarity, emphasis, flow, suspense, brilliance, precision, proportion, depth and so on; kept each of these as poorly defined as Quality itself, but demonstrated them by the same class reading techniques. He showed how the aspect of Quality called unity, the hanging-togetherness of a story, could be improved with a technique called an outline. The authority of an argument could be jacked up with a technique called footnotes, which gives authoritative reference. Outlines and footnotes are standard things taught in all freshman composition classes, but now as devices for improving Quality they had a purpose. And if a student turned in a bunch of dumb references or a sloppy outline that showed he was just fulfilling an assignment by rote, he could be told that while his paper may have fulfilled the letter of the assignment it obviously didn’t fulfill the goal of Quality, and was therefore worthless.
Robert M. Pirsig
Like most people I am smarter than some, dumber than others, skinnier than most, and fatter than a few, but none was ever more confused than I was. I flew with confusion always parallel to me, and a whole internal chase at my rear. The one matter that was not confusing to me, but seemed to escape all the others, was the fact that the only thing that was certain to become obsolete, would necessarily become wearied and worn, was the truth. I knew this in spite of the truth that I had had little truck with the truth in my life. It was not that I considered myself a resident in a den of lies, but rather that my history was shrouded and diced and soaking wet with hysteria and contradiction. Contradictions or no, my trajectory through life, though different from most, was, nonetheless, a trajectory.
Percival Everett
So I just went over and sat with him. Not a biggie. I wish people would stop trying to turn it into something more. He's just a kid. The weirdest-looking kid I've ever seen, yes. But just a kid.
R.J. Palacio