Quotes by American Authors - Page 2564

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got plans for next Thursday. And I’m not in the mood to have them ruined by some apocalypse.
Deborah Blake
Praxeology is a theoretical and systematic, not a historical, science. Its scope is human action as such, irrespective of all environmental, accidental, and individual circumstances of the concrete acts. Its cognition is purely formal and general without reference to the material content and the particular features of the actual case. It aims at knowledge valid for all instances in which the conditions exactly correspond to those implied in its assumptions and inferences. Its statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.
Ludwig von Mises
Thou art hunger, yo. Make with the starvation.
Jackie Morse Kessler
Now that it is obvious we are falling at a furious speed, we are now just anticipating how much area will be covered by the dust from impact, how many more will not see their fall coming.
Fort Free
Some things you sentence yourself to life for.
Donna Lynn Hope
Starting isn’t like that. Starting something is not an event; it’s a series of events. You decide to walk to Cleveland. So you take a first step in the right direction. That’s starting. You spend the rest of the day walking toward Cleveland, one step at a time, picking your feet up and putting them down. At the end of the day, twenty miles later, you stop at a hotel. And what happens the next morning? Either you quit the project or you start again, walking to Cleveland. In fact, every step is a new beginning. Sure, you’re closer than you were yesterday or last week, but you’re still...
Seth Godin
This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right.
Michael Crichton
More dragons incoming...
Julie Kagawa
Does anyone ask a painter -- even the painter himself -- why he paints? Now me, I painted... used to... whatever I saw that was beautiful. It had to be beautiful to me, through and through, before I would paint it. And I used to be a pretty simple fellow, and found many completely beautiful things to paint.But the older you get the fewer completely beautiful things you see. Every flower has a brown spot somewhere, and a hippogriff has evil laughter. So at some point in his development an artist has to paint, not what he sees (which is what I've always done) but the beauty in what he sees. Most painters, I think, cross this line early; I'm crossing it late.("To Here and the Easel", 1954)
Theodore Sturgeon
My mother used to tell me, every time we were watching Cinderella, that Cinderella had the best attitude and that I should strive to be just like her. Later when I grew up, I resented my mother for teaching me that way, as I saw it as the reason why I often felt preyed on by people who were much more like the ugly stepsisters. But now, all of a sudden, I’ve realized that what my mom meant was that no matter how ugly people can be to you, no matter how rough they treat you, no matter how much their actions tempt you to become your worst— you should overcome them by never letting them steal your gentleness. People only win when they are able to take away your gentleness, your sweetness. But if you remember that you’re a princess, and they’re just not, at the end of the day you win! Still, my mom should have pointed me in the direction of Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Cinderella is fine, but had she taught me that Belle was the best way to be, I would have probably never grown to resent that. Belle always retained her gentleness but she could still beat up a pack of wolves at the same time and that’s the kind of princess I wanted to be like! Not to mention she loved books!
C. JoyBell C.
Having begun to feel, people’s desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions.
Nicole Krauss
The purpose of computation is insight, not numbers.
Richard Hamming
When it comes to mental illness most of the diagnoses are similar or the same yet they can never display how we individually go through our pain.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
He’s an even-tempered stallion. What he lacks in stamina he makes up for in speed, kind of like most of the men I’ve slept with.
Lila Shaw
Happiness is a by-product of helping others.
Denny Miller
All I want to be is very young always and very irresponsible and to feel that my life is my own-to live and be happy and die in my own way to please myself
Zelda Fitzgerald
Belief is the basis of intuitive behavior.
Laurie Nadel
(In reference to swingers) In the meantime, if you wish to declare yourself polyamorous, get used to the fact that the confusion is gong to remain as a pejorative. Sure, clear up the misunderstanding as much as you can, but don't put too much effort into setting yourself up as a "good", responsible, community-oriented polyamorist by contrasting yourself to the "bad" swingers - they may not be your siblings, but they're definitely your cousins.
Anthony D. Ravenscroft
Her name badge read: Hello! My name is DIE, DEMIGOD SCUM!
Rick Riordan
We'll be together. We both got our Point Zéro wishes — each other. He said he wished for me every time. He was wishing for me when I entered the tower.
Stephanie Perkins
Mere inflation-that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices-may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.
Henry Hazlitt
A group of ten prisoners from Dachau, I was with them, we hid in the forest to wait for the Americans. The Germans had already left everything behind. We had food but no weapons. For days we could hear bombs exploding around us. We just wanted to survive long enough for the Americans to control the territory. We didn’t want to die. At that point, our prison uniforms were the only things to keep us from being shot on the spot by the Americans. That was all we had. Who would the Americans believe? Real prisoners or guards dressed as prisoners? Those devils might even say we were the Germans. This was our nightmare.
Sergio Troncoso
I want to kiss you," I say, "but I seem to be holding this cat."Skunk lifts his hand and touches it to the side of my face. His fingers are warm from carrying the hot skillet to the table. He regards me very seriously, and for a moment I wonder if he's about to tell me we should Focus on Bicycle Repair. Instead he just looks at me for a very long time."You're beautiful," says Skunk, "and completely batshit.
Hilary T. Smith
When you wake up with a song stuck in your head, it means an angel sang you to sleep.
Denise Baer
The more you listen to your breath, the more you can hear the voice of your soul.
Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati
Life's pressure is equal to your resistance.
Bryant McGill
As Borges has taught us, all the books in the library are contemporary. Great poems are like granaries: they are always ready to enlarge their store.
William H. Gass
When I'm in pain I want everyone I love on the island with me, sitting around the fire, getting drunk on coconut milk, banging out a plan.
Melanie Gideon
The only true and sustainable prosperity is shared prosperity.
Joseph E. Stiglitz
Tell me I'm not crazy," He said. I couldn't do that. I was nowhere near sane enough at the moment to advise anyone else on rational behavior.
Cora Carmack
A soldier: "I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you're a foreign male, you're a rich, exotic American, and their men are a bunch of drunken, criminal slobs.
Robert D. Kaplan
The music, the prayers, the bowing and rising, the incense--all of it was breaking down my defenses. That's what good liturgy does. It breaks your heart open and turns you toward God.
Fred Bahnson
Are you telling me you're cooking me dinner?- Regan Its the quickest way, without physical contact, to get a woman into bed. The kitchen through there?
Nora Roberts
The pen will never be able to move fast enough to write down every word discovered in the space of memory. Some things have been lost forever, other things will perhaps be remembered again, and still other things have been lost and found and lost again. There is no way to be sure of any this.
Paul Auster
Vulnerability really means to be strong and secure enough within yourself that you are able to walk outside without your armor on. You are able to show up in life as just you. That is genuine strength and courage. Armor may look tough, but all it does is mask insecurity and fear.
Alaric Hutchinson
The advice is a call to empathy, the ultimate act of the imagination, and the true ground of all fiction.
Siri Hustvedt
As a rule of thumb, I'd say one cliché per [Romance]--and then be damn sure you can make it work. But if you're going to try to write the virginal amnesiac twin disguised as a boy mistaken for the mother (or father depending how well the disguise works) of a secret baby, honey, you better have some serious skills. Or seek therapy.
Nora Roberts
The plum-colored night sky was shifting to pink to make room for the day, which looked as though it might turn out “glorious and whimsical,” as the Key West Citizen had promised.
Lucy Burdette
What if, right now, as we’re immolating language, we’re doing away with ourselves? Maybe we’ve regressed. The skills we once used for survival – scattered attention, diffuse concentration – have been adapted to finding glowing dots on screens, skimming pop-ups, beams, emails, video streams.
Alena Graedon
I know of other mothers who have children with disabilities,and right away they loved them and decided to fight for them.That isn’t my story.
Gillian Marchenko
All the season pale in comparison to the excitement and freedom of summer.It's the one time of the year when I can cut loose and feel like a kid again.Before the responsibilities,before the soul crushing pressure of trying to figure out my future.I can forget my crappy job;I can forget about my even crappier love life.Summer is my superpower.
T. Torrest
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing. The rest is mere sheep herding.
Ezra Pound
Encased in an elaborate illusion of unlimited power and progress, each of us subscribes, at least until one's midlife crisis, to the belief that existence consists of an eternal, upward spiral of achievement, dependent on will alone. This comforting illusion may be shattered by some urgent irreversible experience ... None more potently confronts us with finiteness and contingency than the imminence of our own death.
IRVIN D.YALOM
Remember that life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away!
Vicki Corona
Because conflict-avoidant Emily would never “bite” or even hiss unless Greg had done something truly horrible, on some level she processes his bite to mean that she’s terribly guilty—of something, anything, who knows what?
Susan Cain
Since the Bible is God’s Word, we shouldn’t be surprised if Satan tries to convince us otherwise.
Billy Graham
The major work of the world is not done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner.
Gordon B. Hinckley
If you're ever feeling a lack of middle-aged white men, just pop into the Capitol. Not so much the House of Representatives, which has a bit more color and texture, but the Senate -- jeez. Yes, let's have more testosterone running the country.Maximum Ride, School's Out--Forever
James Patterson
We would go out and play these songs and people could interpret them however the hell they wanted.
Carrie Brownstein
Like the discovery of most things - love and religion especially - she maintained the child's arrogant wonder than no one had understood it before her and, even if they had, they could not embrace it as passionately as she.
Thomm Quackenbush
Love is a contradiction
Cassandra Clare
The secret to success in any human endeavor is total concentration.
Kurt Vonnegut
He wondered why it was easier to believe in a malevolent spirit than in a benign one. Sometimes it seemed that the human heart, this side of Eden, feared eternal life more than death, light more than darkness, freedom more than surrender.
Dean Koontz
Harrowing The plow has savaged this sweet field Misshapen clods of earth kicked up Rocks and twisted roots exposed to view Last year’s growth demolished by the blade. I have plowed my life this way Turned over a whole history Looking for the roots of what went wrong Until my face is ravaged, furrowed, scared. Enough. The job is done. Whatever’s been uprooted, let it be Seedbed for the growing that’s to come I plowed to unearth last year’s reasons— The farmer plows to plant a greening season.
Parker J. Palmer
In moments of prayer, people tend to pose as a critic and point out perceived flaws in God's art.
Steve Maraboli
Maloney looked around my room and nodded like he approved of the extravagance surrounding him: the inch-thick carpet with its diamond designs, the half moon flock of the wallpaper, and the antique furniture, polished to a museum quality shine. The two goons he brought with him flanked the door, equally impressed, I could tell by their dropped jaws and roving, wanton eyes. One of them set a briefcase on the floor beside him. Finally Maloney’s eyes found me, and his expression turned from amazement to shock.“I didn’t expect you to be--”“A Vampire?” I asked, feeling the touch of a smile form on my lips.
Craig Jones
We aren't just defined by who we are, but by who are friends are. It's funny that we put so much importance on something that wont mean shit once we graduate.
Shaun David Hutchinson
Listen, I didn’t ask for a face and body girls find attractive. But thanks to the mixture of my parents’ DNA, I’ve got them, and I’m not ashamed to use ’em.
Simone Elkeles
If its danger you seek, come on over. I covet tranquility but beget the tempest storm.
Donna Lynn Hope
Intelligence analysts should be self-conscious about their reasoning processes. They should think about how they make judgments and reach conclusions, not just about the judgments and conclusions themselves.
Richard Heuer