Quotes by American Authors - Page 337

I contemplated the phone for some time. Never had I heard her so oddly gay and forthright; as a matter of fact, we hadn't discussed sex since adolescence. Her entire inner life was secretive and mysterious, and no one dared violate it. She sent out powerful "No Trespassing" signals and I had learned to honor them. It crossed my mind that my sister was drunk.
Brooke Hayward
Be a kind person. Yes, even to jerks. Let them be a jerk. You be a kind person.
Karen Salmansohn
My traumatic experience was life changing
Asa Don Brown
Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely.
Thomas P. Murphy
People from the past, have a tendency to walk back into the present, and run over the future.
Anthony Liccione
Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
A thing is never learned until we master it.
Debasish Mridha
The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste coveting one another's desserts hiding shampoo locking each other out of our rooms inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant loving laughing defending and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
Erma Bombeck
The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye the more light you pour upon it the more it will contract.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
If tears were liquor, I'd have drunk myself sick.
Mark Lanegan
They are the largest collection of freshwater lakes in the world. They border eight U.S. states and the Canadian Providence of Ontario and at time have supplied water to one-third of Canadians and one-seventh of Americans. They're vaster than the entire New England region and define beachfront to many people who have never seen an ocean.
Susan Magsamen
What's friendship's realest measure?I'll tell you. The amount of precious time you'll squander on someone else's calamities and fuck-ups.
Richard Ford
I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food.
Laurie Halse Anderson
When the focus becomes ‘What would Jesus do?’ instead of ‘What has Jesus done?’ the [conservative/liberal] labels no longer matter.
Michael S. Horton
I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can.
Gillian Flynn
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W.H. Auden
Everything beautiful is golden and strewn with pearls. Even golden people live here. But misfortune is a dark power, a monstrous, cannibalistic giant, who is, however, vanquished, because a good woman, who happily knows how to avert disaster, stands ready to help.
Jack D. Zipes
Sometimes imaginary troubles are harder to bear than actual ones.
Michelle Cuevas
You will never see me publicly putting a comic down or trying to get them unbooked. If I have a problem with someone they will know. I try to do what is right and not what is easy. You will never see me make jokes about peoples addictions or cries for help. OR other peoples pain for that matter. I believe in lifting up. Not tearing down. Uplift you fellow man. We were born to love one another and to that end I promise what I do in my life is in the name of love.
Johnny Corn
The boys were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it was not.That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we needed was something to turn up that would call for it.
Mark Twain
It is hard to talk about a middle ground for something that is a fundamental right.
Teri Reynolds
Remember then that there is only one important time, and that time is now. The most important one is always the one you are with. And the most important thing is to do good for the one who is standing at your side. This is why we are here.
Jon J. Muth
What is your preference?" She felt nearly sick asking this question."My preference is to pack you in my suitcase,but those TSA people are so picky,and there's some kind of stupid regulation about human trafficing and-""Justin. This is serious.
Jessica Park
I'm relaxed, Belk. I call it Zen and the art of not giving a shit.
Michael Connelly
Fate is an ugly bitch that hates you with a passion.
Ali Parker
Never give up on your dreams, without them life is just an existence.
Heather Welch
Oh, Irrylath,Irrylath, we squaundered our two years together.
Meredith Ann Pierce
You know, one of the interesting things you find about writing fiction is that any fiction you write has to be political. Otherwise, it goes into the realm of fantasy. So like, if you write about a woman in America in 1910, if you don’t write that she can’t really control her property, that she can’t—doesn’t have any say over her children, that she can’t vote—if you don’t put that in it, then it’s a fantasy. Like, well, how is her life informed? That’s true about everybody. If you write about black people, you write about white men, I mean, it has to be political. A lot of people don’t realize that, it seems.
Walter Mosley
As government expands, liberty contracts.
Ronald Reagan
Is that the ultimate need? To secure some agent to act as a salve, a bandage, a cover-up, concealer over the black eye, as opposed to facing the issue head on. Nobody wants to address the fist. We’d all much rather take something for the pain and make it all go away.
Katandra Jackson Nunnally
When it rains," her father said "it pours.
Jodi Picoult
From the standpoint of integrity, I think we all need to own up to our dirty little secrets. I believe that when we are open about our own strange desires or unusual lives, it paves the way for others to do the same. In the past thirty years, gay men and lesbians took a lot of flack to tell the truth about their love lives and their courage opened the door for a mass migration out of the closet. We’re now at a moment in time when unconventional families (even thirty-year triads and gay couples) are losing their children in custody battles because their families don’t conform to mainstream ideas about what a family should be. Given this context, I want to be someone who stands up for my choices even if they’re unpopular, even if I get snickers at cocktail parties.
Victoria Vantoch
Ask yourself at least once a week: "Am I on the right track to achieve my goals at this time? Am I doing the right things that I need to be doing?
Mark F. LaMoure
A god who gave us everything we wanted would be the most malevolent god of all. With an infantile curiosity, we insist on tasting the cockroach on the floor while our father is preparing a magnificent feast for us.
Criss Jami
Coco Chanel used to talk about wearing more than one string of pearls. Why wear one if you can wear two, or something to that effect. I think that one string of pearls is just fine. But that's because my pearls are black, hers were white.
C. JoyBell C.
It is key to remember we can maintain a genuine enthusiasm and love for what IS, in the PRESENT moment, enjoy it with gratitude for all of the blessings in our lives.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire,” Solo says before adding quietly, “Usually an electrical fire near the hyperspace drive, which Chewie always warns me about…
Chuck Wendig
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight, I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
Theodore Parker
But I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.
Carl Sagan
January 8, 1959; Castro enters HavanaOn January 8, 1959, Fidel made his grand entrance into Havana. With his son Fidelito at his side, he rode on top of a Sherman tank to Camp Columbia, where he gave the first of his long, rambling, difficult-to-endure speeches. It was broadcast on radio and television for the entire world to witness. For the Cubans it was what they had waited for! During the speech, smiling Castro asked Camilo Cienfuegos, “How am I doing?” and the catch phrase “Voy bien, Camilo” was born.
Hank Bracker
Nothing rekindles my spirits, gives comfort to my heart and mind, more than a visit to Mississippi... and to be regaled as I often have been, with a platter of fried chicken, field peas, collard greens, fresh corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes with French dressing... and to top it all off with a wedge of freshly baked pecan pie.
Craig Claiborne
Someone's always saying "It's not whether you win or lose " but if you feel that way you're as good as dead.
James Caan
The world shrinks to include only two people, only one of whom -- the beloved -- has power. This inequitable distribution naturally breeds resentment and feelings of hopelessness that the dependent person dare not express for fear of alienating the necessary person even more.
Jeanne Safer
There's an innocent displacement, a dreaming, and idols are perfect for a little girl's dreaming. They aren't real. They aren't the gas station attendant trying to lure you into the back of the service station, a paperboy trying to lure you into a toolshed, a friend's father trying to lure you into his car. They don't lure. They beckon, but like desert mirages.
Rachel Kushner
That's what coming face-to-face with six months in the woods will do to you: as soon as you realize you have the chance to be a different person, you become one. You can forget who you are. This is no accident when you've spent miles wondering, with every labored step, Who is this person who has decided to try this?--wondering who you are. You have nothing but time to answer the question, to give a new account of yourself. Your only witness might be a blanket of cool moss on a sunny day, or a panorama of endless mountains, or a young doe gazing by the Trail. You've yet to discover that the journey is the destination. So you lose yourself, then you find yourself again, farther along.
Winton Porter
I wondered what you'd have on the side with a plate of Deep Fried Anxiety. Pickles? Coleslaw? Potato-strychnine mash?
Robin McKinley
We instinctively feel an overwhelming desire to take sides: organic or conventional, fair or free trade, "pure" or genetically engineered food, wild or farm-raised fish. Like most things in life, though, the sensible answer lies somewhere between the extremes, somewhere in that dull but respectable placed called the pragmatic center. To be a centrist when it comes to food is, unfortunately, to be a radical.
James McWilliams
All that's required for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.
Richard Paul Evans
I have known many who led their fighters to titles, and some who took them right to the end of the rainbow. I have found, however, that destiny controls the passes to these places, and I keep telling myself, trying to believe it, that it is not important, really, how far you go but how you make the trip.
W.C. Heinz
One has to handle these negative experiences alone. You can't get help from your friends or family. You're finally alone with it and you have to come to grips with misfortune and go on.
Shirley Temple Black
I was ashamed by my vulnerability. Nergal had really broken me. I tried so hard to stay strong, but my body couldn’t handle my determination. Eventually, I gave in to what I thought was my ultimate demise. Although my body was still weak, one look at my savior refreshed my will to live, to be strong. I looked longingly into the depths of his eyes, trying to convey my love for him, but there was no way to show how my heart beat just for him. He wasn’t my soul mate, he was my soul.
L.J. Kentowski
Keep an open mind but a skeptical eye.
Carmine Savastano
In our hyper-secular world, worship is still inevitable. But it is vital to remember that our gods don't choose us, we choose them.
John Green
I’ve got to stop this. Stop worrying about the why. Stop forcing what was happening into the realm of impossible. Stop hiding behind excuses. Stop being afraid to step out on faith.
Deatri King-Bey
All I can do is read a book to stay awake, and it rips my life away, but it's a great escape.
Blind Melon
Give me some credit. You don't get far in my game with your eyes closed. I get it-who doesn't like a man in uniform? But trust me, men are never worth it. Behind every great man is a woman who gave up on greatness and tied herself into an apron. Romance is for saps, Abbie. You're sharp, and you've got pluck. Don't waste it.
William Ritter
My memory is good for some things and not others.
Ann Brashares
Life has no destination, it is a journey to see the beauty.
Debasish Mridha
Pain is inevitable but so is joy. Too many of us resort to abject fear or anger due to our sufferings or unknowns in life. Remain steadfast by approaching discovery and love so you can embrace the present moment. The past can serve as nothing more than a lesson and the future can serve as nothing more than a notion.
Adam Starks
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
Erich Fromm