Quotes by American Authors - Page 2997

We cannot go back to the lost oral world, any more than we can turn the clock back to a time before the clock existed. 'Writing and print and the computer,' writes Walter Ong, 'are all ways of technologizing the word'; and once technologized, the word cannot be de-technologized.
Nicholas Carr
When you don't know a thing, learn. When you know the truth, teach.
Debasish Mridha
I like eggs and bacon,” George tells me. “But”—his face clouds—“do you know that bacon is”—tears leap to his eyes—“Wilbur?” Mrs. Garrett sits down next to him immediately. “George, we’ve been through this. Remember? Wilbur did not get made into bacon.” “That’s right.” I bend down too as wetness overflows George’s lashes. “Charlotte the spider saved him. He lived a long and happy life—with Charlotte’s daughters, um, Nelly and Urania and—” “Joy,” Mrs. Garrett concludes. “You, Samantha, are a keeper. I hope you don’t shoplift.”I start to cough. “No. Never.” “Then is bacon Babe, Mom? Is it Babe?”“No, no, Babe’s still herding sheep. Bacon is not Babe. Bacon is only made from really mean pigs,George.” Mrs. Garrett strokes his hair, then brushes his tears away.“Bad pigs,” I clarify.“There are bad pigs?” George looks nervous. Oops.“Well, pigs with, um, no soul.” That doesn’t sound good either. I cast around for a good explanation. “Like the animals that don’t talk in Narnia.” Dumb. George is four. Would he know Narnia yet? He’s still at Curious George.But understanding lights his face. “Oh. That’s okay then. ’Cause I really like bacon.
Huntley Fitzpatrick
If America runs on Dunkin', do I detect a slight limp?
Josh Stern
His tone dripping condescension, Lothaire crooned, “Ah children, it’s not yet story time.” He closed his eyes and turned away, saying over his shoulder, “To anyone who contemplates even nearing me while I sleep: I will garrote you with your own viscera.
Kresley Cole
I also understand that you have to lie to yourself to survive in a bad marriage, you have to delude yourself if you want to carry on in this life.
Rabih Alameddine
I studied a crescent moon hung crooked in a plum purple sky and thought about what it would be like to truly be seen.
Laura Whitcomb
That's depressing, when somebody says "please" to you.
J.D. Salinger
But I will confess 
that I began as an astronomer—a liking
for bright flashes, vast distances, unreachable things,
a hand stretched always toward the furthest limit—
and that my longing for you has not taken me
very far from that original desire
to inscribe a comet’s orbit around the walls
of our city, to gently stroke the surface of the stars.
Troy Jollimore
As hard as I fought to hold on to my anger, to continue to hate my dad, the tugging of the good memories eventually found an inroad to my heart. No one is all good or all bad. The reality that my father would forever be a part of me was inescapable. A big part of making peace with myself was rediscovering the good in him and claiming that as my inheritance. The act of forgiving wasn’t like flipping a switch—forgiven . . . unforgiven . . . forgiven . . . unforgiven . . . forgiven.
Mahtob Mahmoody
Her eyes are sad.My thoughts are sadder.And you can't fall in love with me.She slowly walks inside, avoiding my gaze as she watches her feet with each step.They're the saddest steps I've ever seentaken.I close the door.It's the saddest door I've ever had to close.
Collleen Hoover
Simon!" Clary shouted, and seized his arm. "What?" Simon looked alarmed."I'm not really sleeping with your mom, you know. I was just trying to get your attention. Not that your mom isn't a very attractive woman, for her age.
Cassandra Clare
To add more power to your light, don’t fear the darkness of the night.
Debasish Mridha
...Want to knowwhy my roses grow dead ona living vine? Prayer against civil war. Letus hate with a single heart. Don'tdrink the runoff. I always wanted a ruinso I bought a run-'er-down. Lovecontaminates
Robin Schiff
As it so happens, Mr. Jest, I’ve sometimes come to believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast…
Marissa Meyer
After thirty a body has a mind of its own.
Bette Midler
Crying in the rain. No one sees your tears and your pain gets washed away.
Elizabeth Bourgeret
Stop making excuses and start doing what makes you profoundly happy!
Diana Dentinger
An outdoor café and your French beret are quick ways to my soul, but a good jazz is like standing next to my heart. Don't sail away without your sail-mate, because I've charted our course to a sunset paradise. ~ Fidelis O Mkparu (2016), author of 'Love's Affliction
Fidelis O Mkparu
In his mind, Inman likened the swirling paths of vulture flight to the coffee grounds seeking pattern in his cup. Anyone could be oracle for the random ways things fall against each other. It was simple enough to tell fortunes if a man dedicated himself to the idea that the future will inevitably be worse than the past and that time is a path leading nowhere but a place of deep and persistent threat. The way Inman saw it, if a thing like Fredericksburg was to be used as a marker of current position, then many years hence, at the rate we're going, we'll be eating one another raw.
Charles Frazier
A successful song comes to sing itself inside the listener. It is cellular and seismic, a wave coalescing in the mind and in the flesh. There is a message outside and a message inside, and those messages are the same, like the pat and thud of two heartbeats, one within you, one surrounding. The message of the lullaby is that it’s okay to dim the eyes for a time, to lose sight of yourself as you sleep and as you grow: if you drift, it says, you’ll drift ashore: if you fall, you will fall into place.
Kevin Brockmeier
Being brave is not for the light-hearted. Bravery takes fortitude—the very act of bravery prevents anyone from knowing you were ever afraid in the first place.
Susan C.Young
Even in death, my mother smiled—and she had every reason to do so, for I had become precisely what she hoped I would—her mirror image.
Peggy Toney Horton
His words even imply that philanthropy has deeper depths than is generally realized. The great emotions of compassion and mercy are traced to Him; there is more to human deeds than the doers are aware. He identified every act of kindness as an expression of sympathy with Himself. All kindnesses are either done explicitly or implicitly in His name, or they are refused explicitly or implicitly in His name.
Fulton J. Sheen
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.
Benjamin Franklin
The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another.
M. Scott Peck
Looking at death can be life-affirming. It doesn’t need to mire us in thoughts of uselessness, nihilism, self-recrimination, and indifference to the future. Just a reminder that our days are numbered invites us to consider our blessings, strengthen our resolve to carry on, and escalate our compassion for all creatures, great and small.
Brent Green
Tangled Moon ~ Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you have to let go of the past. And sometimes you have to accept the impossible.
Olivia Stocum
Abby: "You were great. I don't know what I'd have done without you."Dylan: "You'd have done fine. That's one of the most intimidating things about you." Abby: "Intimidating? Me?"Dylan: "It isn't easy for a man to get involved with a woman who's totally capable of handling anything that comes along... It isn't easy for a man to believe that there are woman who can not only do those things but enjoy them... [But] it's all natural for you isn't it? It's incredible.
Nora Roberts
During our visit, we noticed she was mixing up words. She started referring to Muslims as Mormons. After 9/11, she told Jon and me how it was important for America to stop the radical Mormons because they had perpetrated the attacks on the Twin Towers.There was no way we could convince her of the difference. We'd just smile and not. "That's right, Grandma, all the Mormons got together on September 11th and ran their bicycles into the Twin Towers!
Mollie Gross
Too much of anything could destroy you, Simon thought. Too much darkness could kill, but too much light could blind.
Cassandra Clare
Everyone wishes for a better life, and yet they want nothing to change.
K. Weikel
On the best nights, he’d appear outside the bookstore window and wait for me to unlock the door. He usually hadn’t had time to shower between doing things with cattle and horses and coming to find me, and he looked older than us and stronger than us.
Laura Anderson Kurk
Rain didn't make things messy. People did that all on their own.
Barbara Delinsky
In my opinion, if there is one extremely legitimate use for petroleum besides running wood chippers and front-end loaders to handle compost, it's making plastic for season extension. It parks many of the trucks [for cross-country produce transportation]. With the trucks parked, greenhouses, tall tunnels, and more seasonal, localized eating, can we feed ourselves? We still have to answer that burning question.
Joel Salatin
Spend sunny afternoons writing. Take weekends in the country. Dream. Drink good wine, eat fabulous cheese and great bread. Make the kind of love that destroys the bed.
Rachel Hauck
You can never, never have too many books
Drew Barrymore
The burden of intelligence: you can always imagine all those wonderful places where you can never belong.
Robert Reed
I love you , Valentine’ is actually a popular phrase used in greeting cards.”If you were sending me one, what would it say?” he asks.I love you, too, Roman.”And there it is, words that I dread to say and do mean, because with them comes the responsibility of owning it, moving forward together and deciding for real who we are to each other. Now we’re not just lovers discovering what we like and sharing what we know. In this mutual declaration, we’re accountable to each other. We’re in love, and now, our relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead.
Adriana Trigiani
Why do the Gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can't protect themselves?
George R.R. Martin
The simple and terrifying reality, forbidden from discussion in America, was that despite spending $600 billion a year on the military, despite having the best fighting force the world had ever known, they were getting their asses kicked by illiterate peasants who made bombs out of manure and wood.
Michael Hastings
Ever since the other boy had arrived half way through the semester, he'd been so blue, he was practically iridescent.
Lauren Groff
We can each sit and wait to die, from the very day of our births. Those of us who do not do so, choose to ask--and to answer--the two questions that define every conscious creature: What do I want? and What will I do to get it? Which are, finally, only one question: What is my will? Caine teaches us that the answer is always found within our own experience; our lives provide the structure of the question, and a properly phrased question contains its own answer
Matthew Woodring Stover
He considered himself a sort of esoteric martyr, who'd sacrificed everything for principle. Apparently that little book had set him on a course towards political extremism, culminating in the loss of his job at the community college, as well as the breakup of his previously stable marriage. By the time he met Old Hoss, a few years later, Hiram Buckley was one of those unfortunates the normal and untroubled point at in scorn and laugh at derisively; a veritable dog that's kicked while it's down. He was, under such circumstances, a perfect companion for Abner "Old Hoss" Billingsly, one of the few people who didn't consider him a prime candidate for St. Elizabeth's, the infamous mental hospital located in the District of Columbia. Since his career in education had been so rudely interrupted, the Professor had worked his way through a series of menial, low paying jobs, which he inevitably lost due to his proclivity for preaching unwelcome and unpopular political ideas to his fellow employees.
Donald Jeffries
It's amazing the things that the heart and mind can endure. No one ever told me that growing up, so I often spent my childhood thinking something was wrong with me.
Yassin Hall
That's the funny thing about life. We're rarely aware of the bullets we dodge. The just-misses. The almost-never-happeneds. We spend so much time worrying about how the future is going to play out and not nearly enough time admiring the precious perfection of the present.
Lauren Miller
Sexuality is not meant to be this way - an honest, consensual expression in which a girl might take an active role when she feels good and ready and not one minute before. No. Sexual desire is meant to sell soap. And cars. And beer. And religion.
Libba Bray
Lords of blue and Lords of gold,Lords of wind and waters wild,Lords of time that's growing old,When will come the season mild?When will come blue Madoc's child?
Madeleine L'Engle
Sacrifice is not an option, or an anachronism; it´s a fact of life. We all cut off our own limbs to burn on some altar. The crucial thing is to choose an altar that is worth it and a limb you can accept losing.
Tana French
IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage.
Pearl Zhu
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The root of the word “integrity” is “integer.” It’s a math term - and it refers to whole numbers. The word itself implies “wholeness.” These are the questions we must ask ourselves frequently. “Am I whole?” “Are there parts of my character that are lacking?
Josh Hatcher
Henry James chews more than he bites off.
Mrs. Henry Adams
Michiko Nogami (1946—1982)” Is she more apparent because she is notanymore forever? Is her whiteness more whitebecause she was the color of pale honey?A smokestack making the sky more visible.A dead woman filling the whole world. Michikosaid, “The roses you gave me kept me awakewith the sound of their petals falling.
Jack Gilbert
In 2013, 1 percent of poor renters lived in rent-controlled units; 15 percent lived in public housing; and 17 percent received a government subsidy, mainly in the form of a rent-reducing voucher. The remaining 67 percent—2 of every 3 poor renting families—received no federal assistance. 32 This drastic shortfall in government support, coupled with rising rent and utility costs alongside stagnant incomes, is the reason why most poor renting families today spend most of their income on housing.
Matthew Desmond
I think Ken should grow some balls and tell Barbie to piss off," Matt said after Ashley waved an accusing finger in Darren's (leg-puppy) face, then stomped off to a table beside a window.
Rebekkah Ford
If we don’t honor our truth, how can we expect anyone else to do so?
Alexandra Katehakis
Did children want sports cars for parents? No. They wanted Hondas. They wanted to know that the car would start in all seasons.
Dave Eggers
Taking a risk to survive isn’t that impressive. Taking a risk to be happy, that takes guts.
Sarah Noffke
Tears stung her eyes. She sank her knees next to the sleeping bench and gently raked strands of golden hair from him forehead."Don't you die. don't you dare. I forbid it." As if Han Alister had ever listened to anything she said.
Cinda Williams Chima