Quotes by American Authors - Page 2540

Horror shares an edge with hilarity.
Shannon Huffman Polson
When we talk about our problems, we create more of them. When we talk about solutions and positive responses, we create more solutions and positive responses.
Caroline A. Shearer
To her, it was like asking a butterfly what it remembered about being a caterpillar. She could fly now and nothing could touch her when she left the cocoon of her body behind at night.
Thomm Quackenbush
What is it that makes you so angry, bothers you so deeply, that you're compelled to act?
Craig Groeschel
What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth?...The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. "That's what my experience has been,' they say, and it gets folded in with the others--one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive.
Anne Tyler
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be with someone.""There is when your only reason is the being, not the someone.
Jet Mykles
This is what is meant by the phenomenology of the science-making process: Self-observation always leads us to an existential point about the metaphysics of experience, and it is almost always a transforming moment. (p. 286)
Eugene Taylor
the rain in this room is low and thickand undressing my heart through the air. – intimacy 
Nayyirah Waheed
I realized that with hard work the world was your oyster. You could do anything you wanted to do. I learned that at a young age.
Chris Evert
He'd seen when she began to panic, but he hadn't offered comfort like other Doms or changed his plans. He'd just waited her out. She could hate him a little for that.
Cherise Sinclair
Every evening, I died, and every evening, I was born.
Chuck Palahniuk
When we choose to love people and the wonderful things around us, it always puts us one step above the people who choose not too. There's a peace we'll carry in our hearts. A feeling of being worthy of all situations.
Ron Baratono
The world and everyone in it is always ready to blame a man for anything when he is already knocked down.
Therese May
Bring it, Darth Bathrobe!
Jim Butcher
I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley Jr.
It had been so long since she had felt the touch of a man. Too long. She had almost forgotten that ripe, heavy throb of attraction and desire that could instantly drug her body and mind more thoroughly than any hard liquor.
Sherri L. King
Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.
Alice Hoffman
I was so afraid of wanting too much that I couldn't trust her handing me a shot at getting it. I don't want to be that senselessly fearful ever again.
Tammara Webber
It is the most fundamental thing I know about being alive: Everything that lasts is invention followed by tenacious faith.
Alexander Maksik
Most people do not consider dawn to be an attractive experience, unless they are still up.
Ellen Goodman
She would have thought that working and living in continuous happiness, harmony, and security day after day would lead to mental lethargy, that her writing would suffer from too much happiness, that she needed a balanced life with down days and miseries to keep the sharp edge on her work. But the idea that an artist needed to suffer to do her best work was a conceit of the young and inexperienced. The happier she grew, the better she wrote.
Dean Koontz
Because cooks love the social aspect of food, cooking for one is intrinsically interesting. A good meal is like a present, and it can feel goofy, at best, to give yourself a present. On the other hand, there is something life affirming in taking the trouble to feed yourself well, or even decently. Cooking for yourself allows you to be strange or decadent or both. The chances of liking what you make are high, but if it winds up being disgusting, you can always throw it away and order a pizza; no one else will know. In the end, the experimentation, the impulsiveness, and the invention that such conditions allow for will probably make you a better cook.
Jenni Ferrari-Adler
.” I watched her sip at the drink some more. She was strong, healthy, but also petite enough that I was certain I could overpower her. I’d made the right decision not to tranquilize her, I thought. Slipping some powerful barbiturate into a mixed drink wasn’t something I was above, but it always felt like such a lost opportunity. I liked the fight, the tightening and clenching of a woman’s body as she writhed for freedom. I felt the slow swelling of arousal between my legs and made no effort to disguise it.
Alistair Cross
When you get down to the bottom of it, only about half of what we remember really happened. We tend to modify things to make ourselves look better in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Then, if what we did wasn't really very admirable, we tend to forget that it ever happened. A normal human being's grasp on reality is very tenuous at best. Our imaginary lives are usually much nicer.
David Eddings
Death is a tragedy whether it is in the death of one girl-woman in London or seventy-seven men, women, and children in Norway. We know this, but perhaps it needs to be said over and over again so we do not forget.I have never considered compassion a finite resource. I would not want to live in a world where such was the case.
Roxane Gay
Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Long past the moment when her neck begins to stiffen and ache, she continues to stare into the darkness, even though none of the human secrets she needs to know are to be found in the stars but rather closer to the earth her boots stand upon.
Larry Watson
I’m a screwed-up person who no longerknows how to communicate with the people I love. But I meant everything I told you in my letter.
Matthew Quick
And they spoke of their Antigonie, who they called Go, as if she were a friend.Leo hadn't yet written any music, but he had made drawings on butcher paper stolen from the kitchen. They curled around his walls, intricate doodles, extensions of the boy's own lean, slight body. The shape of Leo's jaw in profile, devestating. The way he gnawed his fingernails to the crescents, the fine shining hairs down the center of his nape, the smell of him, up close, pure and clean, bleaching. The ones made for music are the most beloved of all. Their bodies a container for the spirit within; the best of them is music, the rest only instrument of flesh and bone.The weather conspired. Snow fell softly in the windows. It was too cold to be out for long. The world colorless, a dreamscape, a blank page, the linger of woodsmoke on the back of the tongue.
Lauren Groff
This exciting new field of epigenetics--meaning literally "around" the gene--allows us to see how environmental factors alter our gene expression in a specific place within each cell. As a result, we now know that when we take active control of these factors, we can literally help control our health and genetic destiny.
Woodson Merrell
There are plenty of laws to protect guys' money even in war time but there's nothing on the books says a man's life's his own.
Dalton Trumbo
He started writing poetry again, but it didn't come as easily. It was hard now to get past the self-consciousness - the silliness, really - of being such a well-established adult applying himself, seriously, to such a youthful joy.
B.J. Novak
That's what's wrong with women. They want you to wait for them until they get ready and then they don't even tell you how they feel.
Walter Dean Myers
[D]on’t cling to your self-righteous suffering, let it go. . . . Nothing is too good to be true, let yourself be forgiven. To the degree you insist that you must suffer, you insist on the suffering of others as well. (90)
Stephen Levine
Let us think to live and love to think.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
I am an old man, and I am dying...Will you remember me, Jacob?"I promise, one day, I will join you, Mr. Gold."Mr. Gold's laughter sounded like a trumpet and brought light to the corners of the room.
Noah Benshea
When you give without expectations, you feel that joy is rushing through you like the spring breeze caressing a newly blooming flower.
Debasish Mridha
Manners come down to a single principle, talk of nothing that might actually prove interesting.
Meredith Duran
Dreams are pathways for the heart. - Reminim the gnome
T. William Watts
You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you're not passionate enough from the start, you'll never stick it out.
Steve Jobs
Single ladies, the only thing we need to be rescued from is the notion that we need to be rescued.
Mandy Hale
The only thing worst than being hurt is everyone knowing that yoou're hurt.
Carrie Fisher
Jiu Jitsu has given me something to pursue. We all need something to work towards. For people, as well as every piece of matter in the universe, there is no such thing as maintenance. If you are not growing you are decaying. The insidious nature of modern times is that it is so easy not to pursue anything. Societal norms pressure us into jobs we do not like, and the daily comforts of televisions and computers offer much in the way of distraction. If that isn't enough, there is always the numbing effects of alcohol coupled with attention-grabbing sporting events which conveniently run year round so one is never short of stimulus.
Chris Matakas
Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God's greatest gift to man.
David O. McKay
I have nothing to give but my heart so full and these empty hands.""They're not empty now.
Louisa May Alcott
How to earn a viable standard of living while giving vent to their desire to perform creative activities is the quintessential challenge for modern humans. Some people settle for jobs filled with drudgery and in their free time immerse themselves in hobbies that provide them with personal happiness. Other people prefer to find work that makes them happy, even if this occupation requires them to live a more modest standard of living. The greater their impulse is for curiosity and creativity, the less likely that a person will exchange personal happiness for economic security.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
John Steinbeck
Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.
Lorrie Moore
Everyone has baggage, maybe we should help each other carry it.
Rob Liano
that was bad; i shouldn't have done thatto prevent you from entering a catatonic statei am going to maintain a calm facial expressionwith crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanori believe in a human being that is not upseti believe if you are working i should not be insaneor upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?i vacuumed the entire house this morningi cleaned the kitchen and the computer roomand i made you a meat helmet with computer paperthe opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are aloneand separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of momentsand the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinkingyour hands are covering your faceand your body moves like a statuewhen i try to manipulate an appendageif i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time
Tao Lin
You okay?”It’s a residential street, but it’s not the street of the party.I shake my head no.“Are you going to be okay?” he asks.I lean back, resting my head against the seat, and close my eyes. “I miss her.
Jay Asher
In Russia you learn patience," said Ivan. "In America you learn action.
Orson Scott Card
This is how it works now with the news: the story begins with a moral, then a narrative is fashioned to support it.
Walter Kirn
Fate's got a fucking sick sense of humor. Fate is a shape-shifter. It's the kindest and most generous entity imaginable, laying out more goodness than a person deserves, and then it shrinks and curls and forms into something grotesque. You think its one thing, but then its another.
Deb Caletti
We're all here. We're close to the truck, and we met Kenton, a fine citizen of Salem. We rescued Izzy and found our way through a very sad darkness, dangers that we knew from Izzy's Orion interpretation would be waiting for us. We're definitely on the right track.
Jonathan Friesen
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
Jimmy Carter
L.A.'s large convenience stores are so big they can accommodate up to twenty armed robbers at one time.
Jay Leno
None of us are perfect, so a true friend will never look for defects in you as a person, it won't even cross their mind. Your happiness will be their main concern.
Ron Baratono
Time is always ready.
Debasish Mridha
The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.
Namsoon Kang