Quotes by American Authors - Page 3049

great literature is literature that speaks to deep, fundamental human truths and experience in a way that is relatable to the reader and that may provoke engagement or facilitate insight into these truths and experiences. If these truths and experiences are about breaches of the normal, then surely horror has a place in literature, and in facts may proffer deep engagement with the most profound aspects of our existence. Sometimes only horror can say what needs to be said.
Jacob M. Held
A shard of glass cut my belly as I slid into the battered SUV, but I managed to keep the family jewels intact. I’d be counting every small victory tonight.
Lisa Kessler
When the Bolide Fragmentation Rate shot up through a certain level on Day 701, marking the formal beginning of the White Sky, a number of cultural organizations launched programs that they had been planning since around the time of the Crater Lake announcement. Many of these were broadcast on shortwave radio, and so Ivy had her pick of programs from Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Tiananmen Square, the Potala Palace, the Great Pyramids, the Wailing Wall. After sampling all of them she locked her radio dial on Notre Dame, where they were holding the Vigil for the End of the World and would continue doing so until the cathedral fell down in ruins upon the performers’ heads and extinguished all life in the remains of the building. She couldn’t watch it, since video bandwidth was scarce, but she could imagine it well: the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, its ranks swollen by the most prestigious musicians of the Francophone world, all dressed in white tie and tails, ball gowns and tiaras, performing in shifts around the clock, playing a few secular classics but emphasizing the sacred repertoire: masses and requiems. The music was marred by the occasional thud, which she took to be the sonic booms of incoming bolides. In most cases the musicians played right through. Sometimes a singer would skip a beat. An especially big boom produced screams and howls of dismay from the audience, blended with the clank and clatter of shattered stained glass raining to the cathedral’s stone floor. But for the most part the music played sweetly, until it didn’t. Then there was nothing.
Neal Stephenson
Life isn’t measured by the years/days/hours/minutes/seconds you live. Nor is it gauged neither by your accomplishments or wealth nor even by how many friends or good deeds. Life is solely valued by the people you have made feel good about themselves… for those are the ones that pass it on!
Wes Adamson
Trust yourself more than you trust the words of others.
Tiffany L. Jackson
Poor things, she thought - do they have to spend all this energy just to surround me? It seemed pitiful that these automatons should be created and wasted, never knowing more than a minor fragment of the pattern in which they were involved, to learn and follow through insensitively a tiny step in the great dance which was seen close up as the destruction of Natalie, and far off, as the end of the
Shirley Jackson
I had two speeds, which often varied with my blood alcohol level: fine with whatever, and never, ever satisfied. Where was the balance between these two?
Sarah Hepola
Maybe it's just a daughter's job to piss off her mother.
Chuck Palahniuk
Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as 'the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.' But the main problem, alas, remained the same. In Edward's moral universe, Arafat could at last be named as a thug and a practitioner of corruption and extortion. But he could only be identified as such to the extent that he was now and at last aligned with an American design. Thus the only truly unpardonable thing about 'The Chairman' was his readiness to appear on the White House lawn with Yitzhak Rabin and Bill Clinton in 1993. I have real knowledge and memory of this, because George Stephanopoulos—whose father's Orthodox church in Ohio and New York had kept him in touch with what was still a predominantly Christian Arab-American opinion—called me more than once from the White House to help beseech Edward to show up at the event. 'The feedback we get from Arab-American voters is this: If it's such a great idea, why isn't Said signing off on it?' When I called him, Edward was grudging and crabby. 'The old man [Arafat] has no right to sign away land.' Really? Then what had the Algiers deal been all about? How could two states come into being without mutual concessions on territory?
Christopher Hitchens
The future presented by the internet is the mass amateurization of publishing and a switch from 'Why publish this?' to 'Why not?
Clay Shirky
So I guess you were hopelessly romantic and easily distracted, a B-plus mother, certainly good enough to get into Matriarchal State University but not quite good enough for St. Mary's College of the Blessed Womb Warriors.
Sherman Alexie
fortes fortuna adiuvat," Marcello had said to his men. Fortune favors the brave, the bold.
Lisa Tawn Bergren
It is difficult to put words to the smell of decomposing human. It is dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat.
Mary Roach
The world existed for a very long time before this particular set of seven billion billion atoms came along and it will go right on after they're scattered up, down and sideways.
Rick Yancey
If I had had this experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn't understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgement, to common sense, or why they would say "I know, I know" when I urged a little reasonableness on them, and why it meant "It doesn't matter, I just don't care." That's what the saints and the martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations. I might seem to be comparing something great and holy with a minor and ordinary thing, that is, love of God with mortal love. But I just don't see them as separate things at all. If we can be divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love. I devoutly believe this to be true. I remember in those days loving God for the existence of love and being grateful to God for the existence of gratitude, right down in the depths of my misery. I realized many things that I am at a loss to express. And of course those feelings become milder with time, which is a mercy.
Marilynne Robinson
He is a cat, Miss Lancaster. Asking him such questions is an exercise in futility.
Jim Butcher
Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.
Germany Kent
Approach each new day as a new opportunity to be the person you aspire to be.
Bill Courtney
For God and for the future generations.
Sarah Holman
If there's anything worth any risk at all, it's got to be love, right?
Jessica Verdi
...the power of grace can work great things in the human person, greater than we might have dared to hope...(pg.52 in The Examen Prayer).
Fr. Timothy Gallagher OMV
I have always been afraid of banks.
Andrew Jackson
The only sin is mediocrity.
Martha Graham
It seemed he was the perfect lover, at least for the moment. He did not live where you lived. He did not see you often enough, or for long enough, for you to grow bored, or to feel afraid that you were not feeling love---or worse, that you were. The perfection had a cost, which is that he was not in any true sense a real person. He was a coat you bought off the rack, an unsuperlative fashion statement.
Ben Greenman
Proven professionals know that by focusing on quality, you can’t lose with the classics and your clothes will last longer. It’s not about having expensive clothing, it is about having style.
Susan C.Young
There is little that a puppy won't fix, even if the fix is for a short time.
Lauren Groff
To exist as an individual means not simply to be numerically distinct from other things but to be a self-pole in a dynamic relationship with alterity, with what is other, with the world.
Evan Thompson
Do you ever think if people heard our conversations they'd lock us up?"All the time.
Wendy Mass
Each day is an opportunity for you to expand your horizon, to achieve your maximum potential. You may have encountered some obstacles along the way, but don't allow those moments to hinder your progress. In life, we all faces challenges that we must overcome. The importance is to learn from those difficulties and become stronger.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
I had never confronted my parents with the true feelings I had for them, and I had certainly never expressed the depth of my feeling for my mother, being too selfish to try when I should have.
Brooke Hayward
Optimism unaccompanied by personal effort is merely a state of mind and not fruitful.
Edward L. Curtis
Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the works of the Creator.They answered the geologists by saying that the "days" in Genesis were long periods of time, and that after all the flood might have been local. They told the astronomers that the sun and moon were not actually, but only apparently, stopped. And that the appearance was produced by the reflection and refraction of light.They excused the slavery and polygamy, the robbery and murder upheld in the Old Testament by saying that the people were so degraded that Jehovah was compelled to pander to their ignorance and prejudice.In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge the truth, to preserve the creed.At first they flatly denied the facts -- then they belittled them -- then they harmonized them -- then they denied that they had denied them. Then they changed the meaning of the "inspired" book to fit the facts. At first they said that if the facts, as claimed, were true, the Bible was false and Christianity itself a superstition. Afterward they said the facts, as claimed, were true and that they established beyond all doubt the inspiration of the Bible and the divine origin of orthodox religion.Anything they could not dodge, they swallowed and anything they could not swallow, they dodged.I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals.This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Your suffering is there to inspect you and perfect you. We are made complete by our pain.
Bryant McGill
Life is a never-ending poetry of love.
Debasish Mridha
It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values we hold.
Peter Singer
Chiron looked surprised. “I thought that would be obvious enough. The entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.
Rick Riordan
We are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I'd rather be a good one. Wouldn't you?
Randy Alcorn
The simplest strategy for bouts of noxious flatus is to not care. Or perhaps to take advantage of a gastroenterologist I know: get a dog. (To blame.)
Mary Roach
Scripture breathes wisdom like we breathe oxygen. It can't not. Through Scripture, God reveals himself. This wisdom cannot be captured, let alone contained, on a neon bumper sticker or rubber bracelet. Wisdom itself invites us to go deeper- right into a relationship with God himself.Through wisdom, we learn to love God and love what he loves. We find rich counsel on the life we were meant for- in our families, communities, and world. We discover our personal responsibilities to others. And we unearth how to put love into action." -Organic God
Margaret Feinberg
She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second-story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn’t mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else—doorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time—was interference.
Toni Morrison
Almost 1/2 the world’s wealth ($110 trillion) is owned by just 1% of ts population
Ziad K. Abdelnour
Good content isn’t about good storytelling. It’s about telling a true story well.
Ann Handley MarketingProfs
If everything else were still the same, he'd have felt Zee's absence like a gaping hole. But if he could continue to reconfigure his entire life, there would be no missing place where Zee had been.
Rebecca Makkai
I learned early on that most yoga poses are about showing off. You find something amazing you can do, and suddenly, Shazam—you’re a guru, ready for your groupies.
Edward Vilga
Phoebe realized how very wrong she’d been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she’d grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn’t pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception.
Jennifer McMahon
You make velocity look good.
Melissa Cutler
It would cut into him at unpredictable moments, like a gutting knife made of colored light.
David Baldacci
Durzo cleared his throat. "I've got bad news... Life being unfair and all that...""Oh, great. What is it?" [replied Kylar]"Luc Graesin? Kid you died on the wheel to save?""It was more for Logan than for Luc, but what about Luc?""Hanged himself," Durzo said...."Are you joking? After what I did for him? That asshole!
Brent Weeks
A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.
Mark Twain
I hate witches. Humans had the right idea, burning them at the stake.
Charlaine Harris
YES. BECAUSE THAT'S HOW I ROLL. LIKE A SUAVE THING. In fact, from here on, please forward my mail to 1 Suave Hill, Suave Boulevard, Suavieland, Planet of She's-So-Smooth-I-Can't-Believe-She's-Not-Butter.
Michele Jaffe
Breaking childhood teachings is never easy, and in essence, they are like white noise that can sometimes stop us from listening to ourselves, or having to listen to ourselves.
Ramani Durvasula
I will never fully understand why things happen the way they do on this planet. Too many people hold their tongue here. Too many people hide their true feelings. And at the end of the day, that does nothing but hurt someone. The men and women of Tamaran were always taught to live by their emotions, to trust that first reaction, as it is the most pure. Cyborg argues that you need time to make the proper decision. I argue that time blurs the true intent. To Earth standards, I may appear brash and rushed. I never hide what I think. Perhaps that is why Tamaran was a target for so many invasions. Our captors may have enjoyed seeing what pain they inflicted upon us, for our tears were never hidden either.
Geoff Johns
On a related note, I think for many of us, the first step in becoming a good writer is to write crap. In all seriousness, none of us are born knowing how to write. Almost all of us will produce a lot of really lousy stories before we start to get good. (Not all of us will choose to publish those lousy stories, but that's a whole separate discussion...)
Jim C. Hines
Be with someone who willingly runs in the storm with you, not someone who cowers away because of turbulent winds.
Melody Lee
A Manhattan lawyer who describes himself as "America`s leading expert on the militia movement" writes that he hugged his three-year-old kid the night of the Oklahoma City bombing. He told junior that it happened "because they hated too much"For now, let`s accept the premise that one hundred sixty-eight humans died in Oklahoma City because people "hated too much"Now answer these questions if you would be so kind: did a federal sniper shoot Vicki Weaver in the face because he hated too much? Did our government conduct the Tuskegee with syphilis on black soldiers because it hated too much?
Jim Goad
When you are fully present and engaged in your workplace, you will demonstrate that you care about the success of your organization, are a team player, have a can-do attitude, and will go the extra mile to fulfill and exceed expectations.
Susan C.Young
I’m a lot like you,and you’re a lot like me.It’s sad to say,and it’s sad to see.
Kris Kidd
The mind of the most logical thinker goes so easily from one point to another that it is not hard to mistake motion for progress.
Margaret Collier Graham
A Good Man. Every night, like a question-and-answer prayer, my son and I recite...What are you going to be? And he says...An honest man. A fair man. A courageous man. And a good man. That's the most important thing, Papa. And my job is finally done. For the night.
Carew Papritz