Quotes by American Authors - Page 380

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.
Brooks Atkinson
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
J.D. Salinger
Your time is your time. Be awake to it. It's hard work to be wisely alive.
Carew Papritz
What is fear but that ‘thing’ that we believed to be as powerful as it pretended to be.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The Buddha’s criteria for Wise Speech include—in addition to the obvious expectation that speech be truthful— that it be timely, gentle, motivated by kindness, and helpful.
Sylvia Boorstein
Survivors often develop an exaggerated need for control in their adult relationships. It’s the only way they feel safe. They also struggle with commitment—saying yes in a relationship means being trapped in yet another family situation where abuse might take place. So the survivor panics as her relationship gets closer, certain that something terrible is going to happen. She pulls away, rejects, or tests her partner all the time.
Laura Davis
The day stared back an empty gray, with not a speck of white to give character to the lifeless sky.
Ashley Madau
Parenting is the most important responsibility most of us will ever face, and none of us does it perfectly.
Billy Graham
Create your own god in your mind whom you can love, trust, and follow.
Debasish Mridha
sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice to beBukowski.
Charles Bukowski
It seemed to him that love was like a great fire, and that people went flying here and there among the flame and smoke seeking wildly for some rich jewel; and when they found it the flame died down; and, in the end, time polished the jewel into a calm beautiful thing. And the two who had found it sometimes forgot about this jewel of love, and that they ever possessed it, or shared it with each other. But sometimes, toward the end of their lives, they remembered about love once more, and opened the casket of memory in which it lay, faded but still beautiful, and looked at it again before they went their ways.
Lynn Doyle
In the time we spend reeling in confusion, grasping at straws trying to piece our egos together, we forget to acknowledge some things. Society created gender roles and categorizations and lifestyles and names and titles because we fear the unknown, especially when the unknown is us.It’s as though we’re stranded in the middle of an ocean, but we were promised the current would bring us back ashore. We’re given all we need on the life raft. As far as we can see, we’re being led back, slowly. We don’t know when we’ll approach the shore, but all evidence points to the fact that we will. But we don’t spend our time looking around, enjoying the view, seeing who came with us, and riding out the waves. We sit and panic about what we’re doing and why we came here.It doesn’t matter where we started because we may never know. It matters where we’re going, because that, we do. We begin and we end. We’ve seen one, so there’s only one other option.
Brianna Wiest
You are your own essential ally. Get right with yourself.
Bryant McGill
You know all of the young gentlemen better than I do,” Lady Manston continued. “Are there any we should avoid?” All of them, George wanted to say. ''What about Ashbourne’s son?''“No.” “No?” his mother echoed. “No, as in you don’t have an opinion?” “No, as in no. He is not for Billie.” Who, George could not help but note, was watching the mother-son exchange with an odd mix of curiosity and alarm. “Any particular reason?” Lady Manston asked. “He gambles,” George lied. Well, maybe it wasn’t a lie. All gentlemen gambled. He had no idea if the one in question did so to excess. “What about the Billington heir? I think he —” “Also no.” His mother regarded him with an impassive expression. “He’s too young,” George said, hoping it was true. “He is?” She frowned. “I suppose he might be. I can’t remember precisely.
Julia Quinn
I’d skipped the crush kiddie pool and jumped right into the deep, shark-infested ocean of emotions. And, if you’ll forgive the dramatic metaphor, I was a lousy swimmer.
Kody Keplinger
Everything that falls upon the eye is an apparition, a sheet dropped over the world's true workings. The nerves & brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away...so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable...Why must we be left, the survivors picking among flotsam, among the small, unnoticed, unvalued clutter that remained when they vanished, that only catastrophe had made notable?...It seemed to me that what perished need not also be lost.
Marilynn Robinson in Housekeeping
Don't be afraid to live. And hold onto the people you love.
Nyrae Dawn
Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict -- alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence.
Dorothy Thompson
Some changes happen deep down inside of you. And the truth is, only you know about them.
Judy Blume
Never forget: Death was Satan’s greatest victory.
Billy Graham
Has any non-dipshit man ever used the word "ladies" not followed by the word "room"?
Penn Jillette
Faith is tested throughout our lives (James 1:3; I Peter 1:7). As the object of our faith proves Himself faithful throughout these trials, our faith grows. Even if we do not have God’s personal revelation about why we are suffering or how He is weaving our trials into a hidden pattern, we do have the revelation of God’s hidden purposes for us and for creation in Jesus Christ. God has demonstrated His faithfulness objectively, publicly, and finally in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Michael S. Horton
The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia!
Eugene O'Neill
It's going to be okay," she said.The woman slowly nodded, then started crying. Khaki pulled the woman against her numb shoulder, keeping an eye out as the sounds of sirens approached from a distance. About time.As the sirens got louder, Khaki wondered again why she wasn't in more pain. And why the hell had it taken backup so long to get here?
Paige Tyler
Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation-and for me the most important part is listening to God's replies.
Frank C. Laubach
Take pride away from a man and you might as well run a knife through his heart.
Julie Garwood
I was right outside the NSA [on 9/11], so I remember the tension on that day. I remember hearing on the radio, 'the plane's hitting,' and I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it...I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and I think we all do. And I think it's really disingenuous for the government to invoke and sort-of scandalize our memories to sort-of exploit the national trauma that we all suffered together and worked so hard to come through -- and to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe, but cost us liberties and freedoms that we don't need to give up, and that our Constitution says we should not give up.
Edward Snowden
If you pull a rope and some duct tape out of those saddlebags, I’m going to freak.Jeana E. Mann. Intoxicated (Kindle Locations 746-747).
Jeana E. Mann
All around you are people who need Christ: your family, your neighbors, people you work with or go to school with every day. Are you praying for them, asking God to open the door of their hearts to His truth?
Billy Graham
This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
A prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian.
Billy Graham
Behind those thick glasses (of TR's) was a man who did not blink.
John Taliaferro
His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn't matter; the world, the city, and all it's lights and life seemed to have narrowed down to this, just her and Jace, the burning heart of a frozen world.
Cassandra Clare
My best ideas come in the shower, where I’m showered with water, but also ideas.
Ryan Lilly
You can’t believe how bleeding scary the sea is! There’s, like, whales and storms and shit! They don’t bloody tell you that!
Libba Bray
The elevator doors had barely shut before Olivia's fingers were at the buckle of the belt cinching the waist of her trench dress. Drunk on his nearness, she ignored the security camera in the ceiling. It didn't mean a damn thing. Hell, who was she kidding? She was the wild Sweet triplet, the one voted most likely to do anything, and all she wanted to do right now was Mateo.
Avery Flynn
It wasn't just my beast's hunger, but Jean-Claude's blood thirst and Richard's craving for flesh. It was all that and the ardeur running through all of it, so that one hunger fed into the next in an endless chain, a snake eating it's own tail, an Ouroboros of desires.
Laurell K. Hamilton
I’m happy to just be able to come across things. I don’t need to be happy. Happiness is a kind of cheap word. Let’s face it, I’m not the kind of cat that’s going to cut off an ear if I can’t do something. I would commit suicide. I would shoot myself in the brain if things got bad. I would jump from a window…you know, I can think about death openly. It’s nothing to fear. It’s nothing sacred. I’ve seen so many people die. Life’s not sacred either
Bob Dylan
It's come at last", she thought, "the time when you can no longer stand between your children and heartache.
Betty Smith
He who kneels the most, stands the best.
Dwight L. Moody
Death is more uni­ver­sal than life everyone dies but not every­one lives.
Alan Sachs
Storytelling awakens us to that which is real. Honest. . . . it transcends the individual. . . . Those things that are most personal are most general, and are, in turn, most trusted. Stories bind. . . . They are basic to who we are.A story composite personality which grows out of its community. It maintains a stability within that community, providing common knowledge as to how things are, how things should be -- knowledge based on experience. These stories become the conscience of the group. They belong to everyone.
Terry Tempest Williams
Many people are born into their religion. For them it is mostly a matter of legacy and convenience. Their belief is based on faith, not just in the teachings of the religion but also in the acceptance of that religion from their family and culture. For the person who converts, it is a matter of fierce conviction and defiance. Our belief is based on a combination of faith and logic because we need a powerful reason to abandon the traditions of our families and community to embrace beliefs foreign to both. Conversion is a risky business because it can result in losing family, friends and community support.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
I was out of Hell Fire and my black market dealer was dead.
L.A. Kennedy
She had called herself a whore. That was a man's word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it.
Robin Hobb
Sometimes we get caught up in trying to glorify God by praising what He can do and we lose sight of the practical point of what He actually does do.
Dallas Willard
Referring to Jumper the spider, who needs to hide himself in human form, and he's learning to act like a human."I'm sure I can learn to walk faster than that," he said desperately."But you'll also need to learn the nuances of human behavior. Such as not going around naked.""What's wrong with being natural?" he demanded."Humans aren't natural. They are girt about by all manner of conventions. It will take time for you to catch up with them all.
Piers Anthony
Religion turned some folks belligerent.
Eileen Wilks
While the memory of guilt is far from pleasant (like 'wormwood and gall'), it has the curative intent of restoring us into an awareness of the constancy of God's love, new every morning. God's mercy is not spent even with our worst misdeeds.
Thomas C. Oden
Because...because...she came here with me.
Suzanne Collins
Fear is an enemy that can be killed only at close range. The closest range of all is intimacy. The deeper the fear is embedded in one’s spirit, the more vulnerable it is.
Andrew Vachss
There is an element of selfishness to this, I suppose. It feels pretty good to be able to so quickly help someone. That is, after all, one of the great emotional payoffs of medicine. That isn't to say that ECT is either a panacea or without flaws - but when used in the right way for the right purposes it's of great benefit, and condemning it because it isn't perfect would lead to more suffering and harm, no less.
Kitty Dukakis
All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.
Felix Frankfurter
The greatest work you will ever do is charity; the most divine work you will ever do will be changing people’s perception of God, while you’re doing charity.
Shannon L. Alder
He had threatened my parents. I had to remember that. Still, it was really hard to stay mad at a wounded naked man.
Darynda Jones
The Truth is always trying to reveal itslef to us in our physical world.
Matthew A. Petti
What? Did we end up hating each other? Did we end up the way we thought we always knew would? Did I end up wearing khakis because of that fucking ad?
Bret Easton Ellis
A library after closing is a lonely place. It is heart-poundingly silent, and the rows of shelves create an almost unfathomable number of dark and creepy corners.
Vicki Myron
Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.
Tennessee Williams
Although people like Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory University professor who has written and lectured widely on Holocaust denial, have exhorted Jewish parents to just say no to intermarriage, much the way they expect their children not to take drugs, a large majority of parents (and more than a few rabbis) are unable to lay down opposition to intermarriage as a strict operating principle.
Ellen J. McClain