Quotes by American Authors - Page 2583

Art, he said, was a controlled madness...He said that books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.
Steven Millhauser
Nothing can contaminate the purity of my love—not even the dirt of hateful thoughts.
Debasish Mridha
The challenge of mindfulness is to work with the very circumstances that you find yourself in - no matter how unpleasant, how discouraging, how limited, how unending and stuck they may appear to be - and to make sure that you have done everything in your power to use their energies to transform yourself before you decide to cut your losses and move on.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
In my book, the media are a necessary evil: they live off the animal inside us, they bait the front pages with second-hand blood for the hyenas to snuffle up, but they come in useful enough that you want to stay on their good side.
Tana French
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
George Santayana
You honestly expect me to breathe in a world without air?
Renee Ahdieh
Going to work every day was like my hair was on fire and all I had to put it out was a hammer.
Bethany McLean
Our past thinking has determined our present status, and our present thinking will determine our future status; for man is what man thinks.
W.Y. Evans-Wentz
When you pray, all heaven prays with you. That's a mighty army.
Kristen Heitzmann
At the time, I didn't know what forgiveness meant. I wouldn't really know what forgiveness meant for another year, until my pastor, Rick McKinley, happened to spell it out in a sermon. He said that when you forgive, you bear the burden somebody has given you without holding them accountable.
Donald Miller
It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiescence.
Criss Jami
She walked with a ghost of herself, one full of potential and possibility. One who was fearless. Where had that girl gone?
Nora Roberts
Cara: *Flies*Gen: What? I don't have wings!Cara: Ofcourse not! You're a boy.
Jim Henson
If I’m going to have hope, I’m going to have to learn to endure disappointment.
Sharon Weil
Let the night take you. Let the stars evaporate into your dreams. Let sleep be the only comfort for you to believe.
Anthony Liccione
A flexible mind has a better chance to think differently and take a unique path in the life journey.
Pearl Zhu
Change was not something you waited for, quietly, mutely, in a house by the ocean, nothing would ever change unless we forced it into shape.
Andrew Sean Greer
My brothers and I love A Christmas Story. It reminds us of ourselves when we were that age."t"Your father didn't want to give you a BB shotgun because you might shoot your eye out?
Terry Spear
How confusing to live in the shadow of a shadow.
Gillian Flynn
A newborn is murderous/but can't do anything about it.
Kathleen Ossip
I felt as if each person within visual range were slowly draining the life from me. We were all connected, and the more them there were, the more I wanted to crawl under a table and cry.
Shaun David Hutchinson
The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.
Ursula K Le Guin
Heavenly comfort, rather, is truth, which blows away human fantasies that we can live forever, control everything, or fake our lives before God.
Sara Miles
As we got older, their mischiefs continued to be shrugged off, but mine were not, and I knew from that point that I was measured from a different stick than my brothers.
Mary E. Pearson
Very high altitude observatories are a known worker health hazard.
Steven Magee
I count myself as one of the number of those who learn as they write and write as they learn.
John Piper
I HAD known him as a bulldozer, as a samurai, as an android programmed to kill, as Plastic Man and Titanium Man and Matter-Eater Lad, as a Buick Electra, as a Peterbilt truck, and even, for a week, as the Mackinac Bridge, but it was as a werewolf that Timothy Stokes finally went too far.
Michael Chabon
Try to get inside the world of Homer and see what it would be like to think with his view of reality. Only then can you begin to judge it, because only then do you really understand it.
John Mark Reynolds
...many daughters may never have given themselves permission to even 'consider' changing the relationship with their mothers, because they didn't think they had the right to do it.
Susan Forward
If the skill of participatory listening came effortlessly and easy for everyone, there would not be so many misunderstandings, communication breakdowns, irritations, and frustrations.
Susan C.Young
Only by speaking out can we create lasting change. And that change begins with coming out.
DaShanne Stokes
Only Light can drive away the shadows, Darkness can never be diminished by more darkness.
Raymond D. Longoria Jr.
...I was a Champion living the Champion life where nothing was impossible and everything was an opportunity. With my ugly past behind me, I boldly stepped onto my new street and breathed in the fresh cool air.
Shelley Lubben
Right Now Is the Time to Be Kind You cannot do a kindness too soon for you never know how soon it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
It’s not too late,” he says. “Zahra, I—”“Sh.” I lay a finger across his lips. “Don’t say it. You will marry Caspida, and you will learn to love each other. You will live a happy life, long after my lamp has passed to new hands.”“I won’t make my third wish,” he says. “That’s the answer! If I don’t make the wish, you can stay here in the palace for as long as you want. You’ll never have to go back to your lamp. We can fight off anyone who tries to take you from me.
Jessica Khoury
I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
Anne Sexton
Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all.
Mark Z. Danielewski
Friendship is not about ships—no matter how big and fancy and expensive the yacht is.
Richelle E. Goodrich
If you think someone or something other than yourself is responsible for your happiness or success, I'd guess you're not that happy or successful.
Rob Liano
His vision was religious and clean, and therefore his paintings were without decoration or superfluous comment, since a religious man respects the power of God's creation to bear witness for itself.
Thomas Merton
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.
Elizabeth Gilbert
If improving conditions in the workplace for women had been a central agenda for feminist movement in conjunction with efforts to obtain better paying jobs for women and finding jobs for unemployed women of all classes, feminism would have been seen as a movement addressing the concerns of all women.
Bell Hooks
Activism” is not just what we see on the streets or on the Internet or in the news; sometimes, “activism” is the simple act of doggedly, determinedly surviving.
Barbara Gurr
Begin doing what you want to do now.
Marie Beynon Ray
Setting sail using different moral compasses causes a relationship to go in circles.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
The woman who preaches has poison religion. Let the respectable ones go
Stephen King
In my opinion and to the best of my understanding, free-will and pre-determination are two distinctly different economies that are 'operationally co-existent'".
R. Alan Woods
It was darker in the tower than any place Devnee had ever been. The dark had textures, some velvet, some satin. The dark shifted positions.The dark continued to breathe. The breath of the tower lifted her clothing like the flaps of a tent, and sounded in her ears like falling snow.It's the wind coming through the double shutters, Devnee told herself.But how could the wind come through? There were glass windows between the inside and outside shutters.Or were there?The windows weren't just holes in the wall, were they?What if there was no glass? What if things crawled through those open louvers, crept into the room, blew in with the cold that fingered her hair? What creatures of the night could slither through those slats?She had not realized how wonderful glass was, how it protected you and kept you inside.She knew something was out there.
Caroline B. Cooney
Weeping Widows"There is a river that cuts ThroughThe heart of EveAnd flows throughParadise's back window.It streams into A bottomless wellThat rolls down to hellWith the tears of theWeeping widows.The women stand along the well,And cryWhile singing gray lullabiesAs orphaned childrenLight up candles to put on palm leavesTo push into the streamWith petals of jasmine And pieces of tangerine,Then sit back and wait for their fatherTo show up over the horizon Where his heart still beatsIn their dreams.
Suzy Kassem
Endless ocean, blue water, dreamy sky, tranquil beach, love in the air, mind fly high.
Debasish Mridha
There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time and all things in succession. That which grows slowly endures.
J.G. Holland
Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it in our heads that we need to get that feeling- that intimacy- from a single someone else. We call if growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.
David Levithan
Fight, Zinnia, for your soul. You only have one, and one shall remain once you've escaped his clutches... Do not give up on yourself, for strength... it comes... from God.
K. Weikel
i know how it makes you feel...peaceful, permanent, unbroken
Margaret Stohl
Since middle-class Western women can best be weakened psychologically now that we are stronger materially, the beauty myth, as it has resurfaced in the last generation, has had to draw on more technological sophistication and reactionary fervor than ever before. The modern arsenal of the myth is a dissemination of millions of images of the current ideal; although this barrage is generally seen as a collective sexual fantasy, there is in fact little that is sexual about it. It is summoned out of political fear on the part of male-dominated institutions threatened by women's freedom, and it exploits female guilt and apprehension about our own liberation -- latent fears that we might be going too far.
Naomi Wolf
When having lunch or dinner at a long rectangular table, I prefer to take a middle chair so that I can turn to my left or to my right to make meaningful conversation with the people in attendance. When I have been seated at the very end, it can prove to be difficult to speak, hear, and connect with everyone there. Think ahead, and whenever possible, put yourself in the middle of the action!
Susan C.Young
And for the rest of her life, the girl, the woman, she never made a mark on anyone either that proved anything absolutely for certain, that she could ever see, about what she had done at any time, and this does not break her heart."Cloud
Diane Williams
They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment.
Chuck Palahniuk
Of all the Wonders in the World, the greatest wonder of all, was sharing it with you.
Lisa Anderson
Go for it, my heart said, my heart always said.
Kimberly Novosel