Quotes by American Authors - Page 3259

Understanding is a kind of ecstasy
Carl Sagan
Granny always said finding justice was as tough as putting socks on a rooster.
Jessica Maria Tuccelli
All the way, Zoe kept her chin up and pretended she wasn’t mortified, but his sour expression stayed with her. She wasn’t good at making American friends. She changed her language, conduct, and clothing, but it didn’t seem to matter. Whether she wore modest Middle-Eastern clothing or cute Western fashions, everyone knew she didn’t belong.
Michael Benzehabe
In the end, you will not see the physical beauty in others that caught your eye, but the fire that burned within them. This kind of beauty is the bonfire you had to attend.
Shannon L. Alder
You know what it is like to wake up in the middle of a bunch of corpses with a little girl in your arms scared to death?-Enyo
Carolina Cody Aldaz
Stars are the souls of old sailors. They plot the skies and guide the wayward home.
Brian Rathbone
At night the sky is pure astronomy.
Nicole Krauss
Do you think I am a foo, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you ever think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you ever wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?...Cosmetics are an extension of the will. Why do you think all men paint themselves when they go to fight? When I paint my eyes to match my soup, it is not because I have nothing better to do than worry over trifles. It says, I belong here, and you will not deny me. When I streak my lips red as foxgloves, I say, Come here, male. I am your mate, and you will not deny me. When I pinch my cheeks and dust them with mother-of-pearl, I say, Death, keep off, I am your enemy and you will not deny me. I say these things, and the world listens, Masha. Because my magic is as strong as an arm. I am never denied.
Catherynne M. Valente
DNA tells you all the secrets of life,’ he used to say. Except for one—how to live it.
Jennifer Donnelly
I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.
Maya Angelou
I don't believe in hate. To me it wastes too much time. People who hate waste so much of their life hating that they miss out on all the other stuff out here.
Jaycee Dugard
Nonfiction. I didn’t choose it as much as it chose me. It squatted and birthed me one raw winter day then jerked me up and set me to scribing.
Chila Woychik
I wanted to write you a story about magic. I wanted rabbits appearing from hats. I wanted balloons lifting you into the sky. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, war, heartbreak. You never saw it, but there’s a garden inside me.
Shane Jones
The ratio of feed to flesh in chicken, the most efficient animal by this measure, is two pounds of corn to one of meat, which is why chicken costs less than beef.
Michael Pollan
Sharing our story is one way we create intimacy. And like a good novel, it’s more engaging – and lasting – when we allow it to gradually unfold.
Gina Greenlee
Then no matter where you are, in a crowded restaurant or on some desolate street or even in the comforts of your own home, you'll watch yourself dismantle every assurance you ever lived by. You'll stand aside as a great complexity intrudes, tearing apart, piece by piece, all your carefully conceived denials, whether deliberate or unconscious. And for better or worse you'll turn, unable to resist, though try to resist you still will, fighting with everything you've got not to face the thing you most dread, what is now, what will be, what has always come before, the creature you truly are, the creature we all are, buried in the nameless black of a name.And then the nightmares will begin.
Mark Z. Danielewski
When will people learn that just because you can make something doesn’t mean you should?
Sara Gruen
The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.
Noam Chomsky
What you perceive as a failure today may actually be a crucial step towards the success you seek. Never give up.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.
Pat Conroy
The visage of Lucifer mushroomed into hideousness above the cloudbank, rising slowly like some titan climbing to its feet after ages of imprisonment in the Earth.
Walter M. Miller Jr
The same Book that tells us over and over again of God’s love warns us constantly of the devil who would come between us and God, the devil who is ever waiting to ensnare men’s souls.
Billy Graham
Hate springs from fear. Violence is released hatred. Behind every hateful crime and act of human brutality is an admission of fearfulness.
Kilroy J. Oldster
mankind is resilient: the atrocities that horrified us a week ago become acceptable tomorrow.
Joseph Heller
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
Everyone's crazy, but few show it.
Hannah Vandegrift
He tries to force the anger down, but it's like an anvil on his chest. He closes his eyes, like Sammy taught him, and forces the anvil up; he softens.
Chris Crutcher
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
Vannevar Bush
Peace is preferable to war. But it’s not an absolute value, and so we always ask, “What kind of peace?
Noam Chomsky
My brother Keith begged to go with us as usual. He'll turn thirteen in a few days - August 14 - and the thought of waiting two more years until he's 15 must seem impossible to him. I understand. Waiting is terrible. Waiting to be older is worse than other kinds of waiting because there's nothing you can do to make it happen faster.
Octavia E. Butler
Socialists seem to think George Orwell’s 1984 is a suggestion, or at least are unashamed of mimicking the methods of the totalitarian state Orwell depicted. Libertarians know it to be a warning, and a government that micro-manages all aspects of humanity an intolerable reality.
A.E. Samaan
Love is infinite. Grief can lead to love. Love can lead to grief. Grief is a love story told backward just as love is a grief story told backward.
Bridget Asher
Speaking a painful truth should be done only in love - like wielding a sword with no hilt - it should pain oneself in direct proportion to the amount of force exerted.
Criss Jami
Believe you can and you will be halfway there.
Lolly Daskal
NOTHING IS STRONGER THAN THE RESILIENCE OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT. (found in an ad at Goodreads, but similar to the following quote by Bern Williams) : Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
Bern Williams
Always let your heart shine bright, because this inner light will guide you home, even in the darkest night.
Jennifer Sodini
I hated discussing ideas with investors," he said, "because I then become a Defender of the Idea, and that influences your thought process." Once you became an idea's defender you had a harder time changing your mind about it.
Michael Lewis
There are souls, he thought, whose umbilicus has never been cut. They never got weaned from the universe. They do not understand death as an enemy; they look forward to rotting and turning into humus.
Ursula K Le Guin
Let us also acknowledge that the hearts which suffer the most from our wars are those of mothers. Their vital voices have been left out of the political equation for too long. An Iraqi or American mother cries the same as an Israeli or Afghan mother. The eyes of a mother who has suffered the loss of a child can destroy the soul of anyone who gazes upon them. More souls become casualties of war than physical bodies. War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.
Suzy Kassem
… see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as a lack of experience and skill.(Seth Abrams)
Carol S. Dweck
I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of "coffee shops" as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.
Edmund White
We have a duty tonight. Everybody, and guys this for you as well because I know you know women. You have a duty tonight. You only have to tell one other person what you heard. Just tell them what you heard, or ask them have you ever heard of this? If the answer is no, share what you learn tonight.That’s all. You don’t have to do anything else. You just have to tell somebody else. You have to take whatever stigma people think that is there. You have to take it. It’s not male or female. It has nothing to do with that. It has to do with, here’s a disease you don’t know about and you need to know about it. It’s that simple. It’s not rocket science.[Whoopi Goldberg on endometriosis awareness from the 2009 Blossom Ball]
Whoopi Goldberg
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.
Annie Dillard
Love is the most valuable gift that you can give to anyone from your heart.
Debasish Mridha
I'd rather try and fail than quit and not do shit.
Khali Raymond
Whoever wants to know the hearts and minds of America had better learn baseball.
Jacques Barzun
In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. Those who submit - as the majority does - are conditioned to a life lived without their human birthright: work done with the joy and creativity of love.But what are schools for if not to make children fall so deeply in love with the world that they really want to learn about it? That is the true business of schools. And if they succeed in it, all other desirable developments follow of themselves.In a proper school, no fact would ever be presented as a soulless one, for the simple reason that there is no such thing. Every facet of reality, discovered where it lives, startles with its wonder, beauty, meaning.
Marjorie Spock
I would rather my enemy's sword pierce my heart then my friend's dagger stab me in the back." Faustus - Don't Talk Back To Your Vampire
Michele Bardsley
You know that feeling when everyone around you is happy and you feel like you're standing back to watch them from afar? Like you're in this crappy little theatre all by yourself, watching the lives of other people who are totally fabulous? Yeah, that's me.
Jen Naumann
Joy is a sure sign of the presence of God in your life.
Elizabeth George
Oh Beautiful For A Land That's FreeWhere All Can CongregateTogether Live With No DegreeOf Bigotry And Hate
Kathy Bee
Failure is a friend if we can see past the face of the foe that we project on it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Some Buddhists have criticized secular Buddhism because they think it waters down Buddhism. I like to think of it as adding Buddhist flavoring to the sparkling water of secularism.
Rick Heller
When it comes to giving, some people stop at nothing.
Vernon McLellan
A thousand years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, they knew the Earth was flat. Fifteen minutes ago, you knew we humans were alone on it. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Tommy Lee Jones
People in everyday life can sniff out the neediness of a performer trying to earn love.
Lysa TerKeurst
Teen "addiction" to social media is a new extension of typical human engagement. Their use of social media as their primary site of sociality is most often a byproduct of cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with technology, including parental restrictions and highly scheduled lives. Teens turn to, and are obsessed with whichever environment allows them to connect to friends. most teens aren't addicted to social media; if anything, they're addicted to each other.
danah boyd
Two days ago, the Preserve received a curious visitor. Our logbook shows the signature of a Ms. Notah Reelnaym, hailing from the foreign-sounding port of Nowareneerheer, arriving at 10:00 am on the nose with a child and leaving an hour and three minutes later without one. Log notes indicate that Ms. Reelnaym spent precisely one hour touring the Preserve. Mr. Gubbens, our Chief Orphan Wrangler, reports spending that hour walking around the Preserve alone, loudly explaining Preserve policies to no one for no obvious reason. Remaining three minutes of Ms. Reelnaym’s visit unaccounted for.
CARRIE RYAN & JOHN PARKE DAVIS
A question is a door and an unopened door is just part of the wall and as long as it's standing it's doing its job.
Brian McGreevy
The wind blowing through my ripped clothes was so cold that I felt like a Percysicle.
Rick Riordan