Quotes by American Authors - Page 416

I want you. But I’m scared to say it out loud. And it sucks because I've always been someone who always says things out loud.
Nessie Q.
You should stay and keep me company, so I don't get lonely.”“You don't seem like the type of guy who gets lonely.”“Is that a compliment or an insult?”Analia only shrugged.
Kiersten Fay
We aren’t teaching our children to thrive. We teach them to survive. It’s not the same thing. Resilience increases thriving without taking anything away from others.
Jeanine Joy
If you don't want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you.
E. Lockhart
Sin, like a deadly cancer, has invaded every area of our lives: our bodies, our minds, our emotions, our wills—everything.
Billy Graham
I want a simple, ordinary life . . . like humans enjoy.
Deborah Harkness
But Pierre had been born with a shrewdness that made him early aware that a failure to believe that human events were ordered by a higher power was regarded by many in the highest positions as obnoxious and even sinful, and as nothing was to be gained by exciting such hostility, it was better to give a silent or even smiling assent to the fatuous idealism to which, particularly in youth, one was so relentlessly exposed.
Louis Auchincloss
It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.
Annie Dillard
It's a naive domestic burgundy without any breeding but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
James Thurber
The emotional pattern seems to be something like, “[Karl] Polanyi, a person of the left like me, says many true things, beautifully. Therefore his tales about what happened in economic history must be true.” Marx before him got similar treatment. Lately the more eloquent of the environmentalists, such as Wendell Berry, get it too. People want to believe that beauty is truth. A supporting emotional frame on the left arises from the very idea of historical progress: “We must be able to do so much better than this wretched capitalism.” It is not true, but it motivates.
Deirdre N. McCloskey
The author indicts "our culture's rush toward efficiency, speed, quantification, and distraction" and counters with the value of "the time and attention required to find the best words and images and then hold them together in ways that illuminate. This, she diagnoses, "is now wildly countercultural. It is inefficient. Its value is not readily quantifiable. Its utility is intangible.
Cherie Harder
Home. One place is just like another, really. Maybe not. But truth is it's all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I'm no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me. Everywhere you go there's nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I'm at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic. I was at home in England. I would be at home in the desert. In Afghanistan or far Typee. All mine, it all belongs to me. My world.
Michael Shaara
Create your own personal brand to stand apart from the crowd. Package your unique talents, style, personality, and products. Show and tell who you are and what you do—to the world.
Susan C.Young
Every day we make our way through a moral forest, along pathways ever branching. Often we get lost.When the array of paths before us is so perplexing that we can't make a choice, or won't, we can hope that we will be given a sign to guide us. A reliance on sighs, however, can lead to the evasion of all moral obligations, and thus earn a terrible judgment.
Dean Koontz
You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off quard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your composure, your faith and your smile, that is remarkable. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you,
David Crosby
Acknowledge your fear, odd one. Fearlessness is for the insane and the arrogant. You are neither. Those who rely on you for their lives will be well served only if you fear what you should fear. You are a unique soul, a child of grace, but you can still fail yourself and others.
Dean Koontz
Water is taught by thirst;Land, by the oceans passed;Transport, by throe;Peace, by its battles told;Love, by memorial mould;Birds, by the snow.
Emily Dickinson
Paying twenty-five dollars for me was your mistake, ma’am. I’m not worth more than fifteen.
Margaret Brownley
Be careful with this one" said Dina, bending down to greet the cat. "All cats are half jinn, but I think she's three quarters.
G. Willow Wilson
I don’t stand a chance if he doesn't get better. You’ll never be able to let him go. You’ll always feel wrong about being with me.”“The way I always felt wrong kissing him because of you,” I say.Gale holds my gaze. “If I thought that was true, I could almost live with the rest of it.
Suzanne Collins
Time teaches all things to him who lives forever but I have not the luxury of eternity.
Og Mandino
As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be.
Audre Lorde
To have a man whose name is on the label showing such interest, commitment, and determination for the best is a wonderful thing. This is someone who will throw money at quality, who believes in being the best. Never knock it. Would you prefer to have a bean counter in corporate headquarters, someone who never comes near the brewery, making decisions solely on the basis of the bottom line and profit margins?
Charles W. Bamforth
In a word, literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness. The things I have learned and the things I have been taught seem of ridiculously little importance compared with their "large loves and heavenly charities.
Helen Keller
Prayer means keeping company with God who is already present.
Philip Yancey
It's easier for a rich man to ride that camel through the eye of a needle directly into the Kingdom of Heaven, than for some of us to give up our cell phone.
Vera Nazarian
Keep your mind open. The meaning of things lies in how people perceive them. The same thing could mean different meanings to the same people at different times.
Roy T. Bennett
If you are not praying the type of prayers that scare you, your prayers are certainly not frightening our enemy.
Lisa Bevere
Her tone changed from shocked to curious. “How was it? Was it… different?”Sarah bit her lip, ashamed to be gossiping but feeling the strong urge to tell. “Yes,”she confided. “He’s nothing like John. Nothing like him at all.”“Really? What was different? Did he…?” Grace waved a hand as though erasing achalkboard. “Oh, forget it. I shouldn’t be asking this. But,” again her voice lowered, “is he tattooed everywhere?”Sarah knew it was wrong to talk about him like this, but her inner schoolgirl took over and she nodded, eager to share details. “He’s beautiful … like a stained glass window. And he’s really good with his … mouth.” She raised an eyebrow, giving Grace a significant look.Her friend gasped and giggled. “But isn’t it weird? Touching him?”“Skin is skin, Grace,” Sarah chided. “The tattoos are only on the surface, you know.He’s a man.” A sexy, vulnerable, intense, attractive, responsible, sweet, gentle and loving man.
Bonnie Dee
Everything great that has ever happened to humanity has begun as a single thought in someone's mind, and if anyone of us is capable of such a thought, then all of us has the same capacity, capability, because we're all the same.
Yanni
Balance hangs in the fingers of Peace
James Butler
I value ethical standards, of course. But in a culture like ours – which devalues or dismisses the reality and power of the inner life – ethics too often becomes an external code of conduct, an objective set of rules we are told to follow, a moral exoskeleton we put on hoping to prop ourselves up. The problem with exoskeletons is simple: we can slip them off as easily as we can don them.
Parker J. Palmer
From birth to 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35 to 55 good personality. From 55 on she needs good cash. I'm saving my money.
Sophie Tucker
I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings.
Bret Easton Ellis
You’re my true north. No compass would point me in any other direction but to you.
Kristen Hope Mazzola
He gazed into her eyes. "I was never any good at saying no to you." He cupped her face and put his forehead to hers. "I was going to protest, and then give in." Aribelle smiled. "I hope you never get good at saying no to me.
Victorine E. Lieske
I thought about him everyday until then. I started having these conversations with him in my head that you have when you meet someone you sense is going to be important in your life.
Deb Caletti
I could faintly smell the ocean. I imagined being one of the old oak trees standing there swaying in the wind and braving all sorts of weather. I pondered what they had seen in the past and what they might see in the future
Nancy B. Brewer
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.
J.D. Salinger
Yes, but perhaps he did have something to do with it.” (In such arguments Stenham often found himself unexpectedly extolling the bourgeois virtues.) “If he was good himself, and worked hard—”“Never!” cried Amar, his eyes blazing. “You’re a Nazarene, a Christian. That’s why you talk that way. If you were a Moslem and said such things, you’d be killed or struck blind here, this minute. Christians have good hearts, but they don’t know anything. They think they can change what has been written. They’re afraid to die because they don’t understand what death is for. And if you’re afraid to die, then you don’t know what life is for. How can you live?
Paul Bowles
Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.
Dale Carnegie
Sadistic brutality and mystical feeling go always hand in hand when the normal capacity for orgastic experience is lacking. This was as true of the inquisitors of the medieval church, of the cruel and mystical Philip II of Spain, as it is of any modern mass murderer.
Wilhelm Reich
...explaining men still assume I am, in some sort of obscene impregnation metaphor, an empty vessel to be filled with their wisdom and knowledge.
Rebecca Solnit
The problem isn't finding out where you are gonna go-its figuring out what you are gonna do once you get there that is! (Jamie Sullivan)
Nicholas Sparks
Her smile shames the sun
Harlan Coben
That's all it takes, one drop of fear to curdle love into hate.
James M. Cain
Do you always touch strangers?” I question, trying to ignore the warmth of his hand and the way I have to remember to breathe. “You’ve been upgraded to acquaintance,” he winks. “This is completely appropriate.
Teresa Michaels
When people asked I used to tell them how sick I was. The more I talked about being sick the worse I got. Finally I started saying "I'm getting better." It took a while but then I started to feel better too.
Michael Hirsch
Information exists for a reason, as well as the Consciousness. The Ego and the Self are important concepts to one's character, to one's alpha and omega. However, how do you know what you know? How do you predict? How you reason? How do you justify? How do you interpret? What is the difference between logic and fantasy? When is the line blurred, and when is the blurred line clear? When you stop living, and dive into existence, you can uncover the world behind yourself; the divine ground. Truth itself wears a mask, but if you dive deep enough, you can wear the mask of Truth. So let me ask you, how well do you know your reality? How well do you know your imagination? Have you stood on the ground behind your reality? Have you seen the mask of Truth, and if so, have you worn its mask?
Lionel Suggs
Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.
David F. Wells
But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said.On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop.But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?'Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.
Erica Jong
The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.
Don Roff
What?" I asked."Nothing," he said."Why are you looking at me like that?"Augustus half smiled. "Because you're beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence.
John Green
The man she despised had his job back. Her job. Damn it to hell. She’d never be able to live with him now.
Abby Niles
The Supreme lesson of Life is Love....
Jacqueline Ripstein
I have always loved you, princess" Robin Goodfellow promised, his green eyes shining in the darkness. "I always will. And I'll take whatever you can give me.
Julie Kagawa
Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters")
Vladimir Nabokov
However much grief I carried, I liked the way my life was tending, these bright new directions. It's only human, to mourn and to reach toward forwardness at once.
Mark Doty
despair all ye mortals,” he said in a voice of doom. “the mama approacheth
Lexi George
She had no doubt in her mind what he was going to do. And while her ever-elusive shred of common sense squealed, “no,” every thing else in her shouted, “Bring it on.
Marissa Clarke