Quotes by American Authors - Page 338

The gospel is neither religion nor irreligion - it is something else altogether. Religion makes law and moral obedience a means of salvation, while irreligion makes the individual a law to him - or herself. The gospel, however, is that Jesus takes the law of God so seriously that He paid the penalty of disobedience, so we can be saved by sheer grace.
Timothy J. Keller
Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.
Pat Conroy
To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them.At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?
Derrick Jensen
Make the mental physical, and the physical mental, and things will improve.
A.M. Homes
Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you...you were born to fight tyranny.
Seth Grahame-Smith
They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?
Stephen King
I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.
Glen Cook
The people we find truly anathema are the ones who reduce the past to caricature and distortit to fit their own bigoted stereotypes. We’ve gone to events that claimed to be historic fashionshows but turned out to be gaudy polyester parades with no shadow of reality behind them. Aswe heard our ancestors mocked and bigoted stereotypes presented as facts, we felt like we hadgone to an event advertised as an NAACP convention only to discover it was actually a minstrelshow featuring actors in blackface. Some so-called “living history” events really are that bigoted.When we object to history being degraded this way, the guilty parties shout that they are “justhaving fun.” What they are really doing is attacking a past that cannot defend itself. Perhapsthey are having fun, but it is the sort of fun a schoolyard brute has at the expense of a child whogoes home bruised and weeping. It’s time someone stood up for the past.I have always hated bullies. The instinct to attack difference can be seen in every socialspecies, but if humans truly desire to rise above barbarism, then we must cease acting like beasts.The human race may have been born in mud and ignorance, but we are blessed with mindssufficiently powerful to shape our behavior. Personal choices form the lives of individuals; thesum of all interactions determine the nature of societies.At present, it is politically fashionable in America to tolerate limited diversity based aroundrace, religion, and sexual orientation, yet following a trend does not equate with being trulyopen-minded. There are people who proudly proclaim they support women’s rights, yet have anappallingly limited definition of what those rights entail. (Currently, fashionable privileges arevoting, working outside the home, and easy divorce; some people would be dumbfounded at theidea that creating beautiful things, working inside the home, and marriage are equally desirablerights for many women.) In the eighteenth century, Voltaire declared, “I disagree with what yousay but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.”3 Many modern Americans seem to haveperverted this to, “I will fight to the death for your right to agree with what I say.”When we stand up for history, we are in our way standing up for all true diversity. When wequestion stereotypes and fight ignorance about the past, we force people to question ignorance ingeneral.
Sarah A. Chrisman
There are only patterns, patterns on top of patterns, patterns that affect other patterns. Patterns hidden by patterns. Patterns within patterns. If you watch close, history does nothing but repeat itself. What we call chaos is just patterns we haven't recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher. what we can't understand we call nonsense. What we can't read we call gibberish.There is no free will. There are no variables.
Chuck Palahniuk
I create a home that is a safe and nurturing place for me, where I am free to gather myself.
Maureen Brady
Perhaps creativity’s greatest mercy is this: By completely absorbing our attention for a short and magical spell, it can relieve us temporarily from the dreadful burden of being who we are. Best of all, at the end of your creative adventure, you have a souvenir—something that you made, something to remind you forever of your brief but transformative encounter with inspiration
Elizabeth Gilbert
Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.
John Waters
... we shoved out many hopes and fears into their hands, believing those hands were strong because they had firm handshakes. They failed us, always. There was no way they could not fail us - they were human, and so were we.
Isaac Marion
She'd taken his heart and his virginity and left him more bitter than sweet.
Avery Flynn
We are not ‘censored’ in the traditional way in the United States: writers are not beaten or killed because of their words, and no Ministry of Truth enforces an official version of what can be printed and thought. But in this culture of images, we are censoring ourselves. That may be more insidious and long-lasting. What I mean is that we disparage long-term complexity, and extol superficiality. We ignore reading, and lavish time on images. To read, in my mind, is to consider and to think. To see an image is to react. What happens when we start believing the world and what is important in it are only these reactions and prejudices? What have you become when the most expected of you is simply to press a ‘Like’ button? What kind of gulag is it when its inhabitants are too stupid to understand they are its prisoners?
Sergio Troncoso
The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore - “I’m easy; I’ll eat anything” - can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list.
Jonathan Safran Foer
People think I am younger then I really am,because I act so immature.
James Hauenstein
Sorry, there´s no magic bullet. You gotta eat healthy and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. End of story.
Morgan Spurlock
For being different, it’s easy. But to be unique, it’s a complicated thing.
Lady Gaga
Suddenly, as Avis clung to her father’s neck and ear while, with a casual arm, the man enveloped his lumpy and large offspring, I saw Lolita’s smile lose all its light and become a frozen little shadow of itself, and the fruit knife slipped off the table and struck her with its silver handle a freak blow on the ankle which made her gasp, and crouch head forward, and then, jumping on one leg, her face awful with the preparatory grimace which children hold till the tears gush, she was gone — to be followed at once and consoled in the kitchen by Avis who had such a wonderful fat pink dad and a small chubby brother, and a brand-new baby sister, and a home, and two grinning dogs, and Lolita had nothing.
Vladimir Nabokov
When I was young, I thought classical music was only the background noise for cartoons.
Ben Carson
The more you know who you are and what you want, the less let things upset you
Sofia Coppola
One day you do meet a man who kisses you and you can't breathe around it and you realize you don't need air.
Karen Marie Moning
Fear is not respect. It is but a conniving, little weasel next to that mighty lion. They are a far, far cry from the same animal.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Is this how it goes? You fall in love, and nothing seems truly scary anymore, and life is one big possibility?
Jenny Han
[Friendship] It was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. Friendship was witnessing another's slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. It was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person's most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.
Hanya Yanagihara
But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.
Ray Bradbury
Express gratitude for every little thing.
Debasish Mridha
In my dreams," said Ender, "I'm never sure whether I'm really me.
Orson Scott Card
Offstage, I couldn't put things into words, and that was the one thing I'd always been able to rely on. Putting my feelings into words and praying they wouldn't be able to get out again.
Carrie Fisher
The girl wore her scars the way some women wore their finest jewelry.
Sarah J Maas
Even if we no longer have much in common, we would have always had the past, which, in some ways, is just as important as the present or future. It is where we come from, what makes us who we are.
Emily Giffin
When their lips finally met, all the pent up emotion within Christina’s breast surged, funneling into a whirlwind of heat. Pushing away all thoughts, she allowed herself only to feel. Lachlan could be so physical, so powerful, so brutal, but when he wrapped his arms around her, Christina felt invincible. Be it true or nay, she felt loved, and cherished, and valued. Reaching up, she slid her fingers through his locks. Soft waves of thick tresses contrasted with hardened male….tAs his kiss eased, he cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. “I wish I could hold you in my arms forever.
Amy Jarecki
The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.
Gary Gygax
This is not the "relativism of truth" presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. president turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a "mockery of the promise and fitness of things," to return to the OED definition of irony.This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They are not flawed protagonists either, but are driven at least as much by their unsavory characteristics as by any moral sense. They aren't flawed figures who try to do the right thing; they don't necessarily learn from their mistakes; and we aren't asked to like them in spite of their obvious faults. Though they usually aren't interested in making good, they do set themselves some kind of mission--Anderson's films are mostly quest movies in an age that no longer believes in quests, and this gives them both an old-fashioned flavor and an air of disillusionment and futility.
Arved Mark Ashby
We sit, silent, the comfortable way only good friends can sit.
Alex Flinn
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.From an Irish headstone
Richard Puz
Act like you care. Pray like you care. Speak, smile, reach out, and live like you care.  The point is to make sure those in your life know beyond doubt that you do care.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Instead, shake things up today! Live through today. Don’t just exist through it - LIVE through it!
Steve Maraboli
Worry wasn’t an emotion to which he was particularly accustomed—and it worried him.
Sol Luckman
Emotion kicked logic’s ass. He was going after Quinn.
Alyssa Day
As history of any kind will tell us, when human beings get an opportunity to express their individual selves, a few selves will go completely over the top.
Doug Glanville
The properties of mind are not purely mental: They are shaped in crucial ways by the body and brain and how the body can function in everyday life. The embodied mind is thus very much of this world. Our flesh is inseparable from what Merleau-Ponty called the "flesh of the world" and what David Abram refers to as "the-more-than-human-world." Our body is intimately tied to what we walk on, sit on, touch, taste, smell, see, breathe, and move within. Our corporeality is part of the corporeality of the world.
George Lakoff
It is in opposing the world’s lies that we impose truth in our hearts.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
A friend comes over with a Ouija board.It spells out: Bourbon. Where’s the band?Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.
Kelli Russell Agodon
Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime And departing leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
You?" I start to laugh. "Look at you. You're a knock-out. You're smarter than I am. You're on a career track and you're family-centered and you probably even can balance your checkbook.""And I'm lonely, Cambell." Jewel adds. Why do you think I had to learn to act so independent? I also get mad too quickly, and I hog the covers, and my second toe is longer than my big one. My hair has its own zipcode. Plus, I get certifiably crazy when I've got PSM. You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact that they're not.
Jodi Picoult
Up there in the sky.Don’t you see him?No, not the moon.The Man in the Moon.He wasn’t always a man.Nor was he always on the moon.He was once a child.Like you.Until a battle,a shooting star,and a lost balloonled him on a quest.Meet the very firstGuardian of Childhood.MiM, the Man in the Moon.
William Joyce
For me, at least, fiction is the only way i can even begin to twist my lying memories into something true.
John Green
[Leslie Bennett] You have a teenager who desperately wants to separate...If you don't have a career, these New Domesticity types are likely to find themselves standing in the kitchen with all these domestic skills and no outlet for them, no way to earn a living.... [A]t that point your kids are not thanking you for having made the hand-pureed baby food and for giving them homemade cookies. They don't feel you've done them a big favor; they say, "Why didn't she ever grow up and take responsibility for her own life?
Emily Matchar
Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye
Beyoncé Knowles
...William Stegner...coined the term 'the geography of hope,' countering the argument that wilderness preservation served elites with the assertion that wilderness could be a place in which everyone could locate their hopefulness even if few actually entered it.
Rebecca Solnit
When you practice mindfulness, you bloom like a flower.
Debasish Mridha
Try not to take this the wrong way, but your brain is smarter than you are.
Stan Slap
Honesty is overrated. As someone once said, 'Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the heart.'""It was the Duc de Richelieu," said Lillian, who had read the same book of philosophy during their schoolroom lessons. "And the accurate quote is, 'Secrecy is the first essential in affairs of the State.'""He was French, though," Daisy argued. "I'm sure he meant the heart as well."Lillian laughed and glanced at her sister affectionately. "Perhaps he did. But I don't want to keep secrets from Lord Westcliff.""Oh, very well. But heed my words- it wouldn't be a true love affair if you didn't have a few little secrets.
Lisa Kleypas
Please do not become so hurt by life that when someone loving comes along, or something good happens, you resist allowing the love and joy in.
Karen Salmansohn
Nero, you are an example to all the children on this shuttle. Because most of them are so foolish, they think it is better to keep their stupidest thoughts to themselves. You, however, understand the profound truth that you must reveal your stupidity openly. To hold your stupidity inside you is to embrace it, to cling to it, to protect it. But when you expose your stupidity, you give yourself the chance to have it caught, corrected, and replaced with wisdom. Be brave, all of you, like Nero Boulanger, and when you have a thought of such surpassing ignorance that you think it's actually smart, make sure to make some noise, to let your mental limitations squeak out some whimpering fart of a thought, so that you have a chance to learn.
Orson Scott Card
The grass may be greener on the other side, but will the sky be as blue?
Court Young
I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.
David Brooks
ultimately, the long-term goal is to have a critically informed public vote out of office representatives that are sacrificing children to the corporate bottom line with prepackaged teacher-proof curricula, standardized tests, and accountability schemes.
Pepi Leistyna