Quotes by American Authors - Page 3338

Judge tenderly, if you must. There is usually a side you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle waged that you are not having to fight.
Traci Lea LaRussa
At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.
Robert Frost
You don't have to make it big, but you do have to make a big impact.
Jamie McCall
Li, a willowy manboy with a shock of black hair atop a mouthful of bad teeth was the brother-in-law he had introduced to industrial espionage several years back. Rong often regretted that.
Michael Benzehabe
Nadia...first, I'm flattered you like me. You're a wonderful girl, and I'm lucky that I met you. You're one of my best friends, my only friends. And since that night with Ivy, you've been amazing. You and your brother have truly been there when I needed you to be."I sigh. "Maybe if things had stayed normal—if I never got attacked, if I never met Ivy—I may have been able to return your feelings. But now...right now, I need a friend more than a girlfriend to help me get through this."Nadia didn't look very happy, but she nodded; she understood. "You really liked her, didn't you?"There was no doubt about my answer."Yeah. I did. I still do. And I will for the rest of my life.
Colleen Boyd
Your mission: Be so busy loving your life that you have no time for hate, regret or fear.
Karen Salmansohn
It's effortless to let go of self-absorbed people. It's challenging to let go of someone you care about and it's exceedingly difficult to let go of an ideal and a belief in someone because what exacerbates the disappointment of finding out they weren't who they presented themselves to be, is the betrayal of it.
Donna Lynn Hope
No matter how old you get if you can keep the desire to be creative you're keeping the man-child alive.
John Cassavetes
As the silence returned, I sat back and felt the tension ease away; I hadn’t even known I was tense. A few moments passed and once again the cycling fan laced in with the clanging chains and mixed with the rumbling mower and the buzzing insects.
Gerry Abbey
On a planet where for thousands of years, even today, a woman's worth has been judged exclusively by the productivity of her womb, what the hell is the point of a barren woman?
Elissa Stein and Susan Kim
Judge me if you want, but at the end of my life I choose to have memories not regrets.
Steve Maraboli
When men in Congress come to blows at somemthing someone said,I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red;But if two women disagree, with very little noise,It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise.
Alice Duer Miller
Books have always been among my most trusted of friends, Mr. Linden replied. The best of them allow the mind to wander wherever the author's musings lead.
Walter Dean Myers
A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partnersdo not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gayand swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart’s. To touch heavily would be to arrest the patternand freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no placehere for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Nowarm in arm, now face to face, now back to back—it does not matter which. Because they know theyare partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished byit.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they're boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says "Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed"--because he likes you anyways. He'll tolerate your junk
E. Lockhart
Men could be utter pussycats when they had even a touch of the sniffles.
Thomm Quackenbush
There are always two risks: the risk of trying something new, and the risk of not trying. You risk settling and continuing in the same way, wondering about other paths and possibilities, believing that this is as good as it gets while discontent gnaws away at your soul.
Rob Bell
If the eyes are the window to the soul, then Edward's in trouble 'cause no one is home.
Laurell K. Hamilton
It's knowing one's ... limitations ... and then ignoring them.
Daniel Suarez
He locked gazes with her. “I have to wonder why you aren’t being straight with me. I hate getting myself killed without knowing why.
B.J. Daniels
If the fate of the universe was decided in a single moment at the instant of the Big Bang , that was the most creative moment of all.
Deepak Chopra
(About changing faith) At our best, Christians embrace it, leaving enough space within orthodoxy for God to surprise us every now and then.
Rachel Held Evans
Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.
Criss Jami
Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.
Philip G. Zimbardo
I shall keep my book on the table here, and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.
Louisa May Alcott
People only lie because they are afraid of the truth
Madison Reil
If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?—that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?—that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?—theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?—that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?—there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?—truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?—the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?—that has been the burden of all religions.
Robert G. Ingersoll
For I am a drop of water, I may change but I will never vanish in thin air.
Debasish Mridha
The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.
Anthony Liccione
If I'm damned, what's the point of pretending that I'm not?
Rosamund Hodge
The finest fury is the most controlled.
Christopher Hitchens
The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
Gregory Bateson
Excluding certain ideas and thoughts, calling them hate speech, is an important piece in the progressive movement’s puzzle. If you can’t win an argument logically, demonize your opponent, make him out to be a bad person and all of a sudden the ideas he stands for become bad as well.
Chris Sardegna
A person walks into a room and says hello, and your life takes a course for which you are not prepared. It's a tiny moment (almost-but not quite-unremarkable), the beginning of a hundred thousand tiny moments and some larger ones.
Anita Shreve
He was able to love them again, but he loved them now in a wiser way, knowing their weakness.
William Steig
A joke is a witticism or play on words that’s meant to be funny. I say ‘meant to be’ because most jokes aren’t funny. They range between mildly amusing and grimace-inducingly annoying.
Michael Monroe
A righteous God isn't bound by time. He has an eternity to make things right.
Shannon Dittemore
You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.
Don DeLillo
A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars - billions upon billions of stars. Every star may be a sun to someone.
Carl Sagan
When someone dies, it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, youhave plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all the nerves are still a little raw.
Jodi Picoult
I don't deserve this award but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Jack Benny
I lived here once," the author said after a moment."Here? For a long time?""No. For just a little while when I was young.""It must have been rather cramped.""I didn't notice.""Would you like to try it again?""No. And I couldn't if I wanted to."He shivered slightly and closed the windows. As they went downstairs, the visitor said, half apologetically: "It's really just like all houses, isn't it?"The author nodded."I didn't think it was when I built it, but in the end I suppose it's just like other houses after all.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
o. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!
Ursula K Le Guin
Richard Papen: As it happened, I knew Gartrell. He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, gutteral verbs, and the world "postmodernist.
Donna Tartt
Just let them sit in the goddam sun. But the world won't let them because there's nothing more dangerous than letting old farts sit in the sun. They might be thinking. Same thing with kids. Keep 'em busy or they might start thinking.
Frank McCourt
I'm a buried kind of beautiful.Bring a shovel and a shooting starI may be a night's work.
Casey Renee Kiser
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
Helen Keller
Herondales." Zachariah's voice was a breath, half laughter, half pain. "I had almost forgotten. No other family does so much for love, or feels so much guilt for it. Don't carry the weight of the world on you, Jace. It's too heavy for even a Herondale to bear.
Cassandra Clare
Eventually our whole world, every culture, will explode and we'll all just be fucking cosmic dust. We'll all dissipate. We'll all be nothing and everything. What's more spiritual than that?
Dash Shaw
The whole world had changed. Only the fairy tales remained the same.
Lois Lowry
[asked if his suicide attempt was a cry for help]No. I told no one. You only cry for help if you believe that there's help to cry for.
Wentworth Miller
He didn't say anything more, just waited for me to tell him what I'd been thinking. It was pure speculation, and I was opening myself up to ridicule by saying anything at all. I sat on the stool and realized that I had my loyalties, too.
Patricia Briggs
When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.
Denis Johnson
She wanted to punch her father in his snout, but she wouldn’t. He was her father after all. True, a father whose funeral rite she planned to dance at and toast with ale, but her father just the same.
G.A. Aiken
Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it.
Frank A. Oski
When it comes to relationships, I find it best to have two feet out the door
Josh Stern
It was an unusual sunset. Having sat behind opaque drapery all day, I had not realized that a storm was pushing in and that much of the sky was the precise shade of old suits of armor one finds in museums. At the same time, patches of brilliance engaged in a territorial dispute with the oncoming onyx of the storm. Light and darkness mingled in strange ways both above and below. Shadows and sunshine washed together, streaking the landscape with an unearthly study of glare and gloom. Bright clouds and black folded into each other in a no-man's land of the sky. The autumn trees took on the appearance of sculptures formed in a dream, their leaden-colored trunks and branches and iron-red leaves all locked in an infinite and unliving moment, unnaturally timeless. The gray lake slowly tossed and tumbled in a dead sleep, nudging unconsciously against its breakwall of numb stone. A scene of contradiction and ambivalence, a tragicomedic haze over all. A land of perfect twilight.
Thomas Ligotti
We can always be sure of one thing—that the messengers of discomfort and sacrifice will be stoned and pelted by those who wish to preserve at all costs their own contentment. This is not a lesson that is confined to the Testaments.
Christopher Hitchens
Oh, god…” I whimper. “I haven’t done anything yet, baby,” Colton growls. “I know,” I pant. “I was just saying your name.
Jasinda Wilder
Not setting the 'proper and accepted' religious example for them conjured up images of the bad mother, the worst mother. Yet wouldn't the example of a mother being true to her journey, taking a stand against patriarchy, and questing for spiritual meaning and wholeness, even when it meant exiting circles of orthodoxy, be a worthwhile example?
Sue Monk Kidd