Quotes by American Authors - Page 2724

What they don't tell you when you get sober is that if you manage to stay that way, you will bury your friends. Not everyone gets to have a whole new shiny-but-messy life like I have, and I've never come up with a satisfying explanation for why that is.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom the necessity of listening is what makes the right important.
Walter Lippmann
But when we reduce sex to a function, we also invoke the idea of dysfunction. We are no longer talking about the art of sex; rather, we are talking about the mechanics of sex. Science has replaced religion as the authority; and science is a more formidable arbiter. Medicine knows how to scare even those who scoff at religion. Compared with a diagnosis, what's a mere sin? We used to moralize; today we normalize, and performance anxiety is the secular version of our old religious guilt.
Esther Perel
People are kinder to the unborn than they are to the women themselves, and soon I had my ticket.
Emily Schultz
I don’t know why—it’s just that—I don’t know—they’re not kin."—Surprising word, I think to myself never used it before. Not of kin—sounds like hillbilly talk—not of a kind—same root—kindness, too—they can’t have real kindness toward him, they’re not his kin -- . That’s exactly the feeling. Old word, so ancient it’s almost drowned out. What a change through the centuries. Now anybody can be "kind." And everybody’s supposed to be. Except that long ago it was something you were born into and couldn’t help. Now it’s just a faked-up attitude half the time, like teachers the first day of class. But what do they really know about kindness who are not kin.
Robert M. Pirsig
This was the stuff of novels with -- yeah -- men like him on the cover.
Erin Kellison
Too often we use petty little petitions, oratorical exercises, or the words of others rather than the cries of our inmost being. When you pray, pray!
Billy Graham
Well, you should have a chat with your boyfriend, clarify your desires. Hate to break the news, but, uh, he’s cheatin’ on you. Tell him I said my dog kisses better than him and he hits like a girl.
Courtney Vail
We regarded each other across an expanse wider than the universe, within a space thinner than a razor's edge.
Rick Yancey
Life is like a steering wheel, it only takes one small move to change your entire direction.
Kellie Elmore
Otrera stayed dead the second time," Kinzie said, batting her eyes. "We have to thank you for that. If you ever need a new girlfriend...well, I think you'd look great in an iron collar and an orange jumpsuit."Percy couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. He politely thanked her and changed seats.
Rick Riordan
You couldn't allow yourself to get bored. THAT would be a fight.
Tom Clancy
The world belongs to the Enthusiast who keeps cool.
William McFee
Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure.
Edward Eggleston
It is funny how the things we hate are the things we miss most when they are gone
Erin Bowman
I stood where they'd left me. I watched them get smaller and smaller as they went down the hallway, leaving me there without a word, not even looking back. Only I was getting smaller and smaller, being swallowed up in the suffocating emptiness of the silent house; so that by the time they came back again, I would have disappeared.
Joan D. Vinge
Life is about showing up, so is writing. That’s why I sit at my desk every day and dance my fingers across the keyboard
Laurie Buchanan
Here, this is for you," the girl said, holding out one of the pages on which she'd been drawing."Oh, I... well, thank you." Meg reached out and took the sketch between her fingers.Gazing down, her eyes widened. Instead of the typical childish scribble she'd expected, she discovered two well-rendered figures. The style was a bit loose, and still immature with a tendency to distort the proportions. Even so, it was refined enough enough to have captured remarkably accurate likenesses of her and Cade seated side by side on the sofa. Esme might be only be nine years of age, but already she was an exceptional artist, better than many adults would ever hope to be."This is... extraordinary," Meg said."It's you and Cade," the girl offered, clutching a small fist against her yellow wool skirt. "Do you like it?""I most certainly do. How could I not? You've drawn Cade and me so perfectly. It's beautiful."The girl's oval features came alive with a pleased smile. "Good night, Miss Amberley. I'm glad you're going to be my sister."At a sudden loss for what she knew would never be, Meg settled on the only honest reply she could offer."Sweet dreams, Esme.
Tracy Anne Warren
It weren’t too loo long before I seen something in me, had changed. A bitter seed was planted inside of me. And I just didn’t feel so, accepting, anymore.
Kathryn Stockett
For the first time in years Ashley found herself feeling truly alone. Despite being surrounded by people most of every day, she was unable to connect to them in a way she considered meaningful, and found herself passing through their lives - and her own - in a state of total isolation.
Alex Ross Perry
Novel writing is mostly triage (this now, that later) and obstinacy. Trying something, and when that doesn't work, trying something else. Welcoming clutter Surrendering a good idea for a better one. Knowing you won't find the finish line for a year or two, or five...
Richard Russo
The Pond"August of another summer, and once again I am drinking the sunand the lilies again are spread across the water. I know now what they want is to touch each other. I have not been here for many yearsduring which time I kept living my life. Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he could sing, I wish I could sing. A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate. This is how it has been, and this is how it is: All my life I have been able to feel happiness, except whatever was not happiness, which I also remember. Each of us wears a shadow. But just now it is summer againand I am watching the lilies bow to each other, then slide on the wind and the tug of desire, close, close to one another, Soon now, I'll turn and start for home. And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.
Mary Oliver
The road ahead is long and there will be many setbacks. Success is not assured… but the price of failure has never been this high.
Charles Lee Lesher
Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.
David G. Allen
The opposite of "never enough" isn't abundance or "more than you could ever imagine." The opposite of scarcity is enough...
Brené Brown
So we came to say hello. To the world’s grouchiest person. Because that’s such fun.
Molly Ringle
A thousand truths can be assembled in such a way as to create a colossal lie.
James Rozoff
Impertinent submissive,” Raoul snapped, and his dark brown eyes turned mean. “Nothing new for this one. You're doing a lousy job of bringing her to heel, Marcus.”“Bring me to heel? Like I'm a dog?” Without thinking, Gabi instinctively yanked away and snapped out, “Bite me.
Cherise Sinclair
If a cavalcade of organized killing has nothing to teach us, I don’t know what does.
James K. Morrow
I am not half the man I use to think I was.
Mike Loffredo
Words said can never be recalled. So it is best, oftimes, not to speak too quickly. Yet words left unsaid are worse. We wear them like weights around our hearts.
Ann Rinaldi
There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.
E.A. Bucchianeri
In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence and the heart.
John Williams
Sexuality is one of the most important ways in which we identify, establish, and maintain our boundaries.
Violet Blue
Here's to our enduring sisterhood. May it bind us together more tightly that the Lycra in my Spanx underpants.
Susan McBride
But you have to take control of your destiny. And sometimes that's not easy.
Mari Mancusi
Rock rock. Back and forth. Lull. Push. Release. Swing back. The stars, the leaves, even the sound of the creek throbbing back and forth. Of a boat. Of a hammock. Of a child's swing. Of a womb. Back and forth. Rock rock. Smell of cold current, of stone, manure, blossom. Sleep.
Peter Heller
Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one's identity.
Erich Fromm
I learned that ruling poor men's hands is nothing. Ruling men's money's a wedge in the world. But after I'd split it open a crack I looked in and saw the trick inside it, the filthy nothing, the fooled and rotten faces of rich and successful men.
Robinson Jeffers
See, far above arrogance and selfishness on the rankings of undesirable Lifestyle traits, topping the lengthy list of carnal sins, occupying its very own stratosphere of unforgivablereprehensibility, is lying. Without question, fibbing is the fastest way to secure a one-way trip to blackball status in the swing community. So assured is a liar’s exile from the Lifestyle that should a perjurer come clean about a material untruth and still secure playtime, that individual will have rewritten the entire swing rulebook. And no matter how enticing it may be to rewrite history, I do not recommend attempting it. Not unless you’re lusting after a celibate existence.
Daniel Stern
But should not atheists have an equal obligation to explain the origin of pleasure in a world of randomness and meaninglessness?
Philip Yancey
You are worthless to others if you don't know your own self and self-worth.
Bryant McGill
As to the charge that I am a cranky old man, I plead guilty.
Edward Abbey
Do not make your mind a dumping ground for other people's garbage.
Ezra Taft Benson
Don't let others box you into their idea of what they think you should be. A confined identity is a miserable way to exist. Be you and live free. Trust that in living true to yourself, you will attract people that support and love you, just as you are.
Jaeda DeWalt
So much of friendship is about being in the right place at the right time.
Anna Quindlen
Don't compare yourself to other MOMS... We are all just winging it, just some hide it better than others.
Tanya Masse
If he’s not calling you, it’s because you are not on his mind. If he creates expectations for you, and then doesn’t follow through on little things, he will do same for big things. Be aware of this and realize that he’s okay with disappointing you. Don’t be with someone who doesn’t do what they say they’re going to do. If he’s choosing not to make a simple effort that would put you at ease and bring harmony to a recurring fight, then he doesn’t respect your feelings and needs. “Busy” is another word for “asshole.” “Asshole” is another word for the guy you’re dating. You deserve a fcking phone call.
Greg Behrendt
More than anything, I began to hate women writers. Frances Burney, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Browning, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf. Bronte, Bronte, and Bronte. I began to resent Emily, Anne, and Charlotte—my old friends—with a terrifying passion. They were not only talented; they were brave, a trait I admired more than anything but couldn't seem to possess. The world that raised these women hadn't allowed them to write, yet they had spun fiery novels in spite of all the odds. Meanwhile, I was failing with all the odds tipped in my favor. Here I was, living out Virginia Woolf's wildest feminist fantasy. I was in a room of my own. The world was no longer saying, "Write? What's the good of your writing?" but was instead saying "Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me.
Catherine Lowell
In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.
John Irving
I'm not worried about plagiarism, I don't care if every person between here and Hell's creation put their name on my work as long as it ends up in the eyes of someone that found peace in the words
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Feeling the inevitable claim of the this desert, he experienced a desire to throw off his civilized costume, hurl himself upon Josephina, either succumb, or return to Guadalajara, where men could only complain of having too many buttons to button or unbutton...
Warren Eyster
There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness—(if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time).
Roman Payne
One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.
Cassandra Clare
She was wearing a dark-red swimsuit consisting of two small triangles up above and a mere suggestion of something down below. If she took everything off, Dill thought, she would look a lot less naked.
Ross Thomas
Never act upon wishful thinking. Act without checking the facts, and chances are that you will be swept away along with the mob.
Jim Rogers
You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.
L. Ron Hubbard
There are all kinds of psychological disorders in the West that don't exist in Asia.
Amy Chua
In the case of money, subjective use-value and subjective exchange-value coincide. Both are derived from objective exchange-value, for money has no utility other than that arising from the possibility of obtaining other economic goods in exchange for it.
Ludwig von Mises
Cryptic Dad is cryptic,' I muttered ... We'd hung out all day today. Was there no time in there he could have said, 'Oh, hey, meet me at the magical bookcase at the butt-crack of dawn tomorrow, cool?
Rachel Hawkins