Quotes by American Authors - Page 282

I do. I choose you, which is to choose him and the others and t
Jameson Fitzpatrick
Let Your Imagination Take Flight
Jordan Bernal
There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels.t"Present!" the British officer screamed to his men.t"Present!" yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill.tI pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything.tI thought of Isabel and I missed her.t"FIRE!
Laurie Halse Anderson
Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining but they make them artificial.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.
George R.R. Martin
We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)
Thomas Merton
Learn to catch yourself and stop yourself immediately when you are engaging in negative self-talk.
Bryant McGill
But he saw Naomi as the wind traveling over the field, always searching, never stopping, and never knowing that true piece is when you curl around one little piece of something. One little fern. One little frond. One person to love.
Rene Denfeld
He hadn't "abused" alcohol, but had spent almost four years sitting in a chair drinking jug wine around the clock and looking, variously, at the wall, the window blind, and the TV screen.
Gilbert Sorrentino
Negativity is like being stung constantly by a thousand bees. At first it’s really annoying, but after a few more stings it becomes toxic.
James Jean-Pierre
The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.
John Hughes
We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding. We paper over the voids of our comprehension with science and religion, and make believe that order has been imposed. And, for the most of it, the fiction works. We skim across the surfaces, heedless of the depths below. Dragonflies flitting over a lake, miles deep, pursuing erratic paths to pointless ends. Until that moment when something from the cold unknown reaches up to take us.The biggest lies we save for ourselves. We play a game in which we are gods, in which we make choices, and the current follows in our wake. We pretend a separation from the wild. Pretend that a man’s control runs deep, that civilization is more than a veneer, that reason will be our companion in dark places.
Mark Lawrence
I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being.
Anthony Kiedis
May we all soon go about as our real selves and take joy in it, saying, yes, yes, to whatever we are.
Carol Emshwiller
Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly. The fundamental conceptions of psychology are practically very clear to us, but theoretically they are very confused, and one easily makes the obscurest assumptions in this science without realizing, until challenged, what internal difficulties they involve.
William James
My beard grows down to my toes,I never wears no clothes,I wraps my hairAround my bare,And down the road I goes.
Shel Silverstein
Frankly, I'm not responsible for other people's perceptions and what they consider real or fake. We must abolish the entitlement that deludes us int believing that we have the right to make assumptions about people's identities and project those assumptions onto their genders and bodies.
Janet Mock
All of our thoughts – ideas – are traceable to a sensation, an encounter with the world that leaves an impression upon the mind.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.
Rainbow Rowell
Accustomed to motion, he was forced to be still.
H.W. Brands
My spirit mirrors the radiance of a clear, blue sky. With closed eyes I lift my face and smile, warmed from the core and from above. All hopes and dreams compete with this endless expanse of heaven, desiring the clock of eternity. I reach with my hands―frenziedly achieving―attempting to learn and do all. Yet I understand the humble truth; a drop of rain shall amount to my contribution among all the droplets in the vast ocean of human history. It is a pure and precious tear that seeps from my efforts....my exist
Richelle E. Goodrich
Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.
Jim Butcher
A school library is like the Bat Cave: it's a safe fortress in a chaotic world, a source of knowledge and the lair of a superhero. True, the superhero is more likely to be wearing a cardigan than a batsuit, but still...
Tom Angleberger
Woven into our lives is the very fire from the stars and genes from the sea creatures, and everyone, utterly everyone, is kin in the radiant tapestry of being.
Elizabeth A. Johnson
Without an imagination we would be irreparably shackled to what is, and never be released to what could be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Buddhist teachings discourage us from clinging and grasping to those we hold dear, and from trying to control the people or the relationship. What’s more, we’re encouraged to accept the impermanence of all things: the flower that blooms today will be gone tomorrow, the objects we possess will break or fade or lose their utility, our relationships will change, life will end.
Sharon Salzberg
He wanted nothing to do with her. He wanted everything to do with her.
Robin Bielman
There’s nothing abnormal about loneliness.
Paula Stokes
I don’t want to marry you. I don’t want to want you,” he added fiercely, taking one measured step toward her, then another. “And I sure as hell don’t want to love you. But, God help me, I just can’t stop myself.” Closing the rest of the distance between them in a single stride, he snatched her up by the shoulders, his burning gaze searching her face as if to sear her features into his memory. “I don’t want to marry you because I love you too much to ask you to spend the rest of your life hiding in the shadows.
Teresa Medeiros
That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!
Jesse Ball
Like many people who dress in black, the lump of coal was interested in becoming an artist.
Lemony Snicket
The faith of religion is belief on insufficient evidence.
Sam Harris
For peace, living in harmony is essential.
Debasish Mridha
Any other questions?""Just one," I say. "What color are your eyes?" I want to know what he thinks, how he sees himself - the real Ky - when he dares to look."Blue," he says sounding surprised, "they've always been blue.""Not to me.""What do they look like to you?" he says puzzled, amused. Not looking at my mouth anymore, looking into my eyes."Lots of colors," I say. "At first I thought they were brown. Once I thought they were green...""What are they now?" he asks. He widens his eyes a little, leans closer, lets me look as long and deep as I want."Well?""Everything," I tell him, "They're everything.
Ally Condie
When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.
Helen Rowland
I shook my head, smiling in spite of myself, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Adrian. My husband. If anyone had told me a year ago that I'd be married, I would've said they were joking. If they'd told me I'd be married to a vampire, I would've said they were delusional. Looking at Adrian now, I felt a surge of love well up within me, despite our earlier tension. I could no longer imagine a life without him in it. It was impossible. Could I imagine a life with him that didn't involve us being trapped in a suite of rooms with his mother while both our people reviled us and made plans against us? Definitely. There were any number of futures I'd love to have for us, but his was our current path until something spectacular happened. Outside, the Court's gates, my people wanted to imprison me. Inside them, his people wanted to assault him. At least in this suite, we were safe. Most importantly, we were together.
Richelle Mead
Immobilized in marriage, since long ago, she was taken as rightful property under wedlock. As a side note, I am urged to comment, the curious nature of these terms property and wed-lock; as if doomed to be firmly kept under latch and key, a padlocked yard? Pastures lain fallow occasionally?
Lotte Roy
Have you ever wanted to smash a car? Or break a television? Or maybe burn a big fire in the middle of a city square? If the answer is yes, then you'd have some fun during a zombie infestation. It's the little moments, you know?
Jesse Petersen
As coal pressured into pearls by our weighty existence. Beauty that arose out of pain.
Suzanne Collins
Meditation is a microcosm, a model, a mirror. The skills we practice when we sit are transferable to the rest of our lives.
Sharon Salzberg
I ALMOST KISSED THE GIRL LAST NIGHT.
Marie Lu
To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.
Pearl S. Buck
God’s various blessings are not always obvious.
Jim George
Unhappiness is caused when we cannot let go of our memories.
Jed Rubenfeld
It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!
Ezra Taft Benson
I attained a triumph so complete that it is now rare to meet an American with marks of small pox on his face... Benefits are valuable according to their duration and extent... but the benign remedy Vaccination saves millions of lives every century, like the [gift] of the sun, universal and everla
Benjamin Waterhouse
I know there was a time, when our country was new, when the assignment of these numbers helped organize something that was on the brink of not existing. But we are no longer that country. We are so much more now.
Kiera Cass
Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he’d drawn them into being.
Julie Anne Long
People die. This is the fact the world desperately hides from us from birth. Long after you find out the truth about sex and Santa Claus, this other myth endures, this one about how you’ll always get rescued at the last second and if not, your death will at least mean something and there’ll be somebody there to hold your hand and cry over you. All of society is built to prop up that lie, the whole world a big, noisy puppet show meant to distract us from the fact that at the end, you’ll die, and you’ll probably be alone.
David Wong
Innovation was a curious thing. It never failed to amaze him. And yet this place confirmed what they’d long known: that truly disruptive innovation rarely came from the expected sources. They’d had so much more luck investing in eccentric B and C students. The rationale was simple: Those heavily invested in the status quo had difficulty thinking outside of it—and were often tainted by it. Especially when success and peer approval beckoned. One did not accidentally graduate from top-tier schools. One strove to get in and to maintain grades once there, and to do that, one usually needed to be a master at conformity. To excel in all the accepted conventions. No, the truly different thinkers often went unnoticed.
Daniel Suarez
i've had enough of this. if you'll excuse me, i'm going to find a tavern where i can pay an underdressed woman to sit it my lap and look very pleased with me while i drink heavily
Lisa Kleypas
When you have cat stealers over for tea, you clean the house, buy bagels and cream cheese, and try to figure out how to trap your guests in a lie.
Caroline Paul
I never heard enough damnation from your pulpit. Many mornings I had to strain to take hold of what you were saying, Reverend. I couldn't figure it out, and got dizzy listening, the way you were dodging here and there. A lot of talk about compassion for the less fortunate, I remember that. Never a healthy sign, to my way of thinking, too much fuss and feathers about the poor. They're with us always, the Lord Himself said. Wait till the next go-around, if the poor feel so sorry for themselves on this. The first shall be last. Take away damnation, in my opinion, a man might as well be an atheist. A God that can't damn a body to an eternal Hell can't lift a body up out of the grave either.
John Updike
Live in the present moment, you can't go back to yesterday, you can't leap into tomorrow, Today is your second, minute, hour! Embrace It!
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
My feeling about work is that it's an unnecessary evil, so I've always done my best to avoid it.
Marty Rubin
You miss a lot of a person’s life when you don’t keep in touch. Maybe that’s the point.
Bryant A. Loney
I suppose I'll say it all started with a love letter
Jenny Han
Behind this story so far is another story, as behind the girders of an ancient bridge is the skeleton of a child which superstition says keeps the bridge standing.
James Purdy
no matter how glorious the perception, no matter how gratifying the event,nothing is ever truly fulfilling until you draw closer to God and enter the mystical temple God placed within you.
Kristen Johnson Ingram
As we open up our church meetings to God's power, they will not always follow a predetermined schedule or order. Who can outline what God might have in mind?
Jim Cymbala