Quotes by American Authors - Page 336

That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.
Howard Zinn
You have your world to rebuild, and I have mine.
Ransom Riggs
Yes, we love the good men in our lives and sometimes, oftentimes, the bad ones too- but that we're not in full revolution against the lot of them is pretty amazing when you consider this truth: men get to rape and kill women and still come home to a dinner cooked by one.
Jessica Valenti
How superfluous other people can seem when you are convinced you already have the only ones you need.
Cristina Moracho
When she closed her eyes she felt he had many hands, which touched her everywhere, and many mouths, which passed so swiftly over her, and with a wolflike sharpness, his teeth sank into her fleshiest parts. Naked now, he lay his full length over her. She enjoyed his weight on her, enjoyed being crushed under his body. She wanted him soldered to her, from mouth to feet. Shivers passed through her body.
Anaïs Nin
A psychiatrist is the God of our age. But they cost money.
Sylvia Plath
Can’t call ‘em zombies anymore,” sighed Manny. He seemed almost wistful. “Now we gotta be all politically correct. It’s like the Cold Wars never happened.
David S.E. Zapanta
Do you really want to put yourself through this? Is loving me really enough to endure everything you have to just to be with me?"Meeting his fiery gaze, I ran my fingers through his hair, kissed him gently before I attempted to set us both free. "It will always be enough.
Rachael Wade
I’m so far from lucky, I’m kissing its ass from the other side.
Sonya Bateman
Learn from the past, but don’t live in the past.
Steve Maraboli
May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.]
Thomas Jefferson
Jazz is the assassination, the murdering, the slaying of syncopation. I would even go so far as to confess that we are musical anarchists.
Nick La Rocca
We see things not as they are, we see them as WE are.
Morrie Camhi
Happy birthday,” he whispered, his breath landing warm and suddenly close to my lips, making my insides flip. And just as quickly as he’d surprised me with the cake, he kissed me, one frosting-covered hand moving from my hair to the back of my neck, the other solid and warm in the small of my back, pressing us together, my chest against his ribs, my hip bones just below his, the tops of our bare summer legs hot and touching. I stopped breathing. My eyes were closed and his mouth tasted like marzipan flowers and clove cigarettes, and in ten seconds the whole of my life was wrapped up in that one kiss, that one wish, that one secret that would forever divide my life into two parts. Up, down. Happy, sad. Shock, awe. Before, after. In that single moment, Matt, formerly known as friend, became something else entirely. I kissed him back. I forgot time. I forgot my feet. I forgot the people outside, waiting for us to rejoin the party. I forgot what happens when friends cross into this space. And if my lungs didn’t fill and my heart didn’t beat and my blood didn’t pump without my intervention, I would have forgotten about them, too. I could have stayed like that all night, standing in front of the sink, Matt’s black apple hair brushing my cheeks, heart thumping, lucky and forgetful…
Sarah Ockler
What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.
Alice Walker
If you agree to our arrangement, I control what you feel and how you feel it. Right now we're concentrating on your needs, but soon we'll be focusing in on mine. I have very specific needs. "I like to take things. I'm going to take you. Whenever, wherever and however I want. Does that excite you?"Aries Taylor to his heroine in Stare Me Down,
Riley Murphy
A positive attitude influences our behavior and dictates a successful approach.
Brian Michael Good
They were kissing again, carefully at first, learning the shape and texture of each other's lips, testing the sharpness of the teeth behind them.It's too fast, said a panicky voice in his mind. And too dangerous. He'll drink your juices, taste your brain, crack your soul open like an egg!Hell, I think I want him to do all that.
Poppy Z. Brite
The only thing you can take with you when you die is what you are. Character counts more than possessions.
Orrin Woodward
Yeah, well all I can say is that a half truth is a still a while lie, ain't it...
Terry McMillan
..a disability is something within you. A prejudice is something within theemployer...don’t look at yourself through their eyes. Look at yourself through your own eyes.
Richard N. Bolles
He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It’s not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.
Stephen R. Covey
We all can give in to our inner critic. I don’t know about you, but I would never allow anyone to speak to me the way I speak to myself! I wouldn’t be their friend!
Susan C.Young
But he knew instinctively what he suggested was impossible. She'd been through so much, and held her tears back for so long, that Royce doubted that anything could force her to shed them.
Judith McNaught
Universal housing programs have been successfully implemented all over the developed world. In countries that have such programs, every single family with an income below a certain level who meets basic program requirements has a right to housing assistance.
Matthew Desmond
Here I was at the end of America - no more land - and now there was nowhere to go but back.
Jack Kerouac
Two people whose opinion I respect told me that the word "Christian" would turn people off. This certainly says something about the state of Christianity today. I wouldn't mind if to be a Christian were accepted as being the dangerous thing which it is; I wouldn't mind if, when a group of Christians meet for bread and wine, we might well be interrupted and jailed for subversive activities; I wouldn't mind if, once again, we were being thrown to the lions. I do mind, desperately, that the word "Christian" means for so many people smugness, and piosity, and holier-than-thouness. Who today can recognize a Christian because of "how those Christians love one another?
Madeleine L'Engle
Think of it! We could have gone on longing for one another and pretending not to notice forever. This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.
Mary Ann Shaffer
The Universe is made of our thoughts.Our thoughts are infinite.
Lorin Morgan-Richards
There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things
Wallace Stevens
Even on the silent days, believe your ship will come.
Shana Chartier
I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of any individual.
Murray N. Rothbard
I've never heard anyone come back from downtown Baltimore waxing poetic about the authenticity of poverty.
Lisa Samson
Work is a process, and any process needs to be controlled. To make work productive, therefore, requires building the appropriate controls into the process of work.
Peter F Drucker
No amount of soul searching would fix my past. There was no magical Band-Aid I could stick on my heart, no special glue I could use to make myself whole again. I had shattered to pieces like a fragile vase on concrete; some fragments could be roughly cobbled back together, but many of my vital parts had simply turned to dust, pulverized and scattered by the first gust of wind.
Julie Johnson
I Love You! Three words that mean nothing if not followed through with actions. It seems to be more relevant in the terms of showing verses saying. Anyone can say it, because there are different kinds of love. But, few are willing to actually show it. Saying is one thing. Living proof is another.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self — a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama — a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.
William Styron
When there’s a vacuum of public input, lobbyists usually fill it. But when there’s public input, the people usually win.
Morgan Carroll
An idea is a mental spark, a mindset is a mental inferno
Danny Dover
The amazing, whole, overwhelming, abundant life is found, oddly, by letting go. By living a dangerous faith--the kind of faith that believes in a God who knows our hearts and loves us enough to take our breath away.
Susan May Warren
Twitter is not just for Journalists. You don’t have to be a writer to Tweet.[Social Media]
Germany Kent
Recovery from complete and utter exhaustion facilitates individual creativity
Phillip Gary Smith
Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.
Neal Shusterman
Peeling an OrangeBetween you and a bowl of oranges I lie nudeReading The World’s Illusion through my tears.You reach across me hungry for global fruit,Your bare arm hard, furry and warm on my belly.Your fingers pry the skin of a naval orangeReleasing tiny explosions of spicy oil.You place peeled disks of gold in a bizarre patternOn my white body. Rearranging, you bend and biteThe disks to release further their eager scent.I say “Stop, you’re tickling,” my eyes still on the page.Aromas of groves arise. Through green leavesGlow the lofty snows. Through red lipsYour white teeth close on a translucent segment.Your face over my face eclipses The World’s Illusion.Pulp and juice pass into my mouth from your mouth.We laugh against each other’s lips. I hold my bookBehind your head, still reading, still weeping a little.You say “Read on, I’m just an illusion,” rollingOver upon me soothingly, gently unmoving,Smiling greenly through long lashes. And soonI say “Don’t stop. Don’t disillusion me.”Snows melt. The mountain silvers into many a stream.The oranges are golden worlds in a dark dream.
Virginia Adair
True happiness lies in being compassionate and appreciating the world and our circumstances, rather than being coldhearted and greedy. We often realize too late that our favorite moments are those spent simply with the people we love. In seeing the miracles that unfold around us every day. Eventually we all come to understand that our happiness is derived from being present in the moment. Why wait until the end of your life to discover this Truth?
Russell Simmons
So here my check. Overdue and overdrawn. Cash it in hell.
Jack Ketchum
They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.
Robert Cormier
You're safe here. Perfectly safe. That phrase still haunts me. Haunts me because it's always been a lie. It was a lie before they came and it's still a lie. You're never perfectly safe. No human being on Earth ever is or ever was. To live is to risk your life, your heart, everything. Otherwise, you're just a walking corpse. You're a zombie.
Rick Yancey
We both know that I will not come. We both know that he won't be in Canada. There will be another earthquake, another flood, another war, another reason to not go where we think we are going. It is a strange life, this. Chasing human misery around the planet. We are not the sort of people who go where we say we are going.
Kelsey Hoppe
He spun out enough toilet paper to vandalize a house and carefully cleaned the seat.
Adam Rex
History rhymes, but geography endures.
Andrew C. Katen
I hate forcing myself to go to bed to avoid committing suicide.
Phil Volatile
But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon men. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.
Walter M. Miller Jr
A smile is a reflection of the simplicity of the soul.
Debasish Mridha
I do not NEED a man. That was an impossible thought when I married John thirty years ago. It was unimaginable even seven years ago. I finally understand why lasting love has eluded me: the relationship I've been searching for all along was with myself.
Shary Hauer
Those who improve with age embrace the power of personal growth and personal achievement and begin to replace youth with wisdom, innocence with understanding, and lack of purpose with self-actualization.
Bo Bennett
My sister compares her body to a junkyard and I find bits of scrap metal beneath her bed from boys who bury promises in her belly. Maybe love ruins you a little bit. Maybe we don’t care. We are so young to hate everything so much. Can recite the periodic table from memory but still can’t quite believe it when they say that they love us, too.
Kristina Haynes
Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.
Timothy J. Keller
Poetry": What kind of art assumes the dislike of its audience and what kind of artist aligns herself with that dislike, even encourages it? An art hated from without and within.
Ben Lerner
Whether they will or not, Americans must now begin to look outward. The growing production of the country demands it.
Alfred Thayer Mahan