Quotes by American Authors - Page 46

Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always — these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit. Nor can the actual work be well separated from the entire life. Like the knights of the Middle Ages, there is little the creatively inclined person can do but to prepare himself, body and spirit, for the labor to come — for his adventures are all unknown. In truth, the work itself is the adventure. And no artist could go about this work, or would want to, with less than extraordinary energy and concentration. The extraordinary is what art is about.
Mary Oliver
The brain is more than an assemblage of autonomous modules, each crucial for a specific mental function. Every one of these functionally specialized areas must interact with dozens or hundreds of others, their total integration creating something like a vastly complicated orchestra with thousands of instruments, an orchestra that conducts itself, with an ever-changing score and repertoire.
Oliver Sacks
Evan had heard it all before. A paradise underground, made for things like the worm in front of him. A place where Evan would forget he had ever been human, forget he had a mother, maybe even forget his own name. This thing did not remember its own, Evan was sure of it.
Mary G. Thompson
I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
Thomas Jefferson
The glory that is given to God by the works of his creation is what we call an “external glory.” It is something outside of God. It doesn’t actually add anything to God. It is very much like an artist who has a great talent for painting and a mind full of beautiful images. If the artist puts some of those images on canvas for people to look at and admire, it still hasn’t added anything to the artist himself. It hasn’t made him any better or more wonderful than he was before (p. 5).
Leo J. Trese
One of the fundamental aspects of leadership, I realized more and more, is the ability to instill confidence in others when you yourself are feeling insecure
Howard Schultz
I think that’s what Toni Morrison and Alice Walker understand, the secret language of women. That it’s not a secret at all; men just don’t know how to listen.
Marlon James
Okay. When he comes, you can see him?""Yes. I can hear him, too. And he, uh..."She brushed the bandage on the side of her skull. I looked at her in bewilderment. Was she serious?"He hits you?""Yes.""With his fist?""Yes."John looked up from his coffee indignantly. "Man, what a dick!"I did roll my eyes this time and glared at John once they stopped. I don't know if you've ever seen a ghost, but I'm guessing that if you did, the thing didn't run over and punch you in the face. I'm guessing that's never happened to any of your friends, either.
David Wong
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
Henry David Thoreau
The real architect of a life is the hard and almost impossible circumstances one faces.
John Paul Warren
Why does she even bother sleeping?” I heard Elizabeth ask quietly. “You’d think by now she’d stop trying. We don’t need it.”I paused, waiting to hear Miaka’s response. “She must have a really wonderful dream often enough to make the bad ones worth it.
Kiera Cass
Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.
Susan Sontag
All of us share conscious recognition of our individual self. Each of us is more than a product of our conscious thoughts. The dictation of our unconscious mind also affects our behavior. The unconsciousness cogitates upon problems that are too harsh to submit to conscious resolution. The unconscious mind frequently directs us to take action that a rational, conscious mind would eschew. Resembling a two-sided coin, both our conscious and unconscious minds contribute to our thought processes. Collaborative thoughts lead to action, and repeated actions result in the development of behavior patterns, and ingrained behavior patterns lead to a sense of identity.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Many of my ex-girlfriends were habitual half-asian daters. These women considered half-asian men 'exotic,' 'sexy,' and 'just-like-Keanu Reeves-in-the-Matrix. I consider these stereotypes appropriate because I got laid.
Kip Fulbeck
Tomorrow is the mysterious unknown guest.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
No one was normal, not really.
Richelle Mead
I understood. I suffered. But whose sake was I suffering for? I kept thinking of Señor Saguaro's question: Whose affection do you value more, hers or the others'?
Jerry Spinelli
A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
Bernard Malamud
The future is hope!
John Fiske
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
Douglas R. Casey
Memoir writing draws on all aspects of who we are, body, mind and soul. We are challenged to dig deep, to remember, and once again inhabit the skin of who we were and what we have learned. Writing memoir is an act of testimony, witnessing, healing. When you write a memoir, you draw upon layers of your consciousness and discover your true nature, your essential self, and are transformed the process.” Linda Joy Meyer
Rossandra White
A person must earn enlightenment, Eragon. It is not handed down to you by others, regardless of how revered they be.
Christopher Paolini
Any creature, even one as unassuming as a fish, can become something mighty. When they courageously endure their trials, they meet their destiny.
Colleen Houck
Bearing our cross does not mean wearing gunny sacks and long faces. Some people . . . wear the look of a martyr every time they hear criticism. Sometimes we deserve the criticism we receive; however, we are blessed only when men speak evil against us falsely for Christ’s sake.
Billy Graham
No one wants to be poor. In my view, and the view of many authors who have focused on poverty and practical solutions to it, we need to move beyond the industrial-era paradigm of giving them fish, or even the information-era paradigm of teaching them how to fish, and instead move closer to the cosmic paradigm of giving them the tools with which to create their own ingenious means of addressing their problems in their cultural context and their time, while drawing--at their convenience, not ours--on our dispersed knowledge.
Robert David Steele
Setbacks allow us to take a step back and look at the view from a whole.
Brittany Burgunder
When the zone calls, you must listen. You never know how long being in the zone lasts.It is a cardinal rule - you must take advantage of every second that you are in the zone.
JohnA Passaro
He was afraid of touching his own wrist. He never attempted to sleep on his left side, even in those dismal hours of the night when the insomniac longs for a third side after trying the two he has.
Vladimir Nabokov
I've got no tolerance for a man who hurts women. Every man on this planet owes his life to a woman. I hope they catch the bastard and hang him by his nuts.
Pamela Clare
What in God's name did he want me to say? That I agreed with him completely at how our kiss had been successful? That it had meant as much as a kiss I'd drop on top of a child's head before bed to him? Well I wouldn't lie for the sake of lying. I'd rather stay silent and realize that the kind, gentle, passionate person I'd fallen for didn't exist and in his place was a cold, unfeeling fool who wouldn't know romance even if it had slapped him in the face.
Lauren Cagliola Green
You have to do what you love to do not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.
Lucinda Basset
...each of us from the seance stood alone. Like so many pillars of salt, we had tried to look back and failed. And in the eyes of the others who shared the pale, flat sky with us, there was sometimes suspicion, sometimes a little fear.
Joan Lowery Nixon
Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
E.L.Doctorow
To write,” Marguerite Duras remarked, “is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly.
Terry Tempest Williams
The greatest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the USA is currently in process and the culprits are the energy, electrical, electronics and wireless radiation industries.
Steven Magee
Nevertheless statesmen are still greatly exercised by the problem of the international distribution of money. For hundreds of years, the Midas Theory, systematized by Mercantilism, has been the rule followed by governments in taking measures of commercial policy. In spite of Hume, Smith, and Ricardo, it still dominates men's minds more than would be expected. Phoenix-like, it rises again and again from its own ashes.
Ludwig von Mises
There is a single truth, it filters through different stories and languages because people come from different cultures and speak different languages. And this truth has manifested itself through millennia, in multiple ways. Different people belong to different manifestations of truth. Some people take those manifestations and turn them into religions, or into gathering places or into a system. Others take those manifestations and allow that light to illuminate the paths on their inward journeys. All in all, the only reason why there is strife or hatred in any way, is because of the strife and hatred and intolerance inside of people. Truth does not call for any division or any hatred or intolerance of any kind. In order to love one thing, this does not mean we need to put down another one.
C. JoyBell C.
The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past four hundred years.
Walter A. McDougall
Success-minded people make a decision to achieve a goal and never have to make that decision again. They will be faced with a choice or some new circumstances to deal with, but the decision to achieve the goal is not in question. They have only to make adjustments along the way.
John Patrick Hickey
I was a fool, alone, preparing to do what every fool did at such times—I was going to a bar to drink myself smart.
Genna Rulon
I've never begged. not for anything... except my mother's love.And that was a useless waste of time.
Kristin Hannah
If the sky falls, there'll be a bigger sky behind it.
Marty Rubin
Liam can't be a rebellious son and expect to be a sentinel at the same time. I won't allow it. Sentinels obey orders. They have to.
Thea Harrison
Aren’t faeries supposed to be, like, really tiny? With wings and a wand and faerie dust?”“I’m not Tinker Bell!
Rachel Morgan
Circumstances cannot change how you feel. When you truly love someone – on a level that goes deeper than your mind, deeper than your memories, all the way to the very thing that makes you human – you do whatever it takes. You save him.
Jessica Brody
When I was younger, my mom loved to garden. But the flowers would never grow. She just kept trying.''I don't understand.''Because you can't.''What does this have to do with anything?'I don't fiddle with my fingers and there's no apology on the tip of my tongue when I say, 'I am my mother's son.
Ellie Lieberman
Every soul is beautiful and precious; is worthy of dignity and respect, and deserving of peace, joy and love.
Bryant McGill
�“You swore this deal would be a safe little exchange. I didn�’t sign up for this�—Chinese mafia and Hashishins. I�’m an MD, not special ops.�”Kira Hardy in Dawn of a Dark Knight
Zoe Forward
Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.
Diana Gabaldon
Every civilization is a fruit from the sturdy tree of barbarism, and falls at the greatest distance from its trunk.
Will Durant
The mosh pit will reveal all the answers. The mosh pit never lies.-Norah, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
Rachel Cohn
If there is one lesson I've learned from failure and success, it's this. I am not the outcome. I am never the result. I am only the effort.
Kamal Ravikant
We tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.
William Kittredge
We need to get our minds right, because right now we are behaving as if we are out of our right minds.
Carlos Wallace
Our ability to solve problem is limited by our conception of what is feasible.
Russell L. Ackoff
Hoover Dam," Thalia said. "It's huge."We stood at the river's edge, looking up at a curve of concrete that loomed between the cliffs. People were walking along the top of the dam. They were so tiny they looked like fleas.The naiads had left with a lot of grumbling—not in words I could understand, but it was obvious they hated this dam blocking up their nice river. Our canoes floated back downstream, swirling in the wake from the dam's discharge vents."Seven hundred feet tall," I said. "Built in the 1930s.""Five million cubic acres of water," Thalia said.Graver sighed. "Largest construction project in the United States."Zoe stared at us. "How do you know all that?""Annabeth," I said. "She liked architecture.""She was nuts about monuments," Thalia said."Spouted facts all the time." Grover sniffled. "So annoying.""I wish she were here," I said.
Rick Riordan
Some of the most memorable, and least regrettable, nights of my own youth were spent in coon hunting with farmers. There is no denying that these activities contributed to the economy of farm households, but a further fact is that they were pleasures; they were wilderness pleasures, not greatly different from the pleasures pursued by conservationists and wilderness lovers. As I was always aware, my friends the coon hunters were not motivated just by the wish to tree coons and listen to hounds and listen to each other, all of which were sufficiently attractive; they were coon hunters also because they wanted to be afoot in the woods at night. Most of the farmers I have known, and certainly the most interesting ones, have had the capacity to ramble about outdoors for the mere happiness of it, alert to the doings of the creatures, amused by the sight of a fox catching grasshoppers, or by the puzzle of wild tracks in the snow.
Wendell Berry
Well, sometimes I worry that my whole life will be based about what's comfortable and easy. I'll care too much about what makes me feel good to ever really reach for anything. And then I worry that even if I do, I won't succeed.
Julia Hoban
Well, you played me, Rabbit. You played me, and it worked, and I’m not the kind of person to make the same mistake twice. Your whole life is a game, but you know what? I already have a life. Poker’s nothing to me but a goddamn deck of cards.
Elle Lothlorien
What's more, the kaleidoscopic blend of gender-variant and gender-typical traits that characterizes gay people is exactly what enables us to make our own unique contributions to society. It's the reason that we should be valued, celebrated, and welcomed into society rather than merely being tolerated. The aim should be to foster acceptance of gay people as we are, in all our rich diversity and not to seek acceptance by shoe-horning ourselves into conformity with the straight majority.
Simon LeVay