Quotes by American Authors - Page 464

When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you're using force. And force, my friends, is violence. The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.
Robert A. Heinlein
False humility is better than no humility at all.
Paul Krassner
You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.
Cassandra Clare
Act to make your vision a reality.
Debasish Mridha
Had a big trial. It was like an Errol Flynn movie.
Jeannie Walker
Experience," which is just a euphemism for heartache and heartbreak, failed love and false promises, for every time you told yourself This is the real thing and Finally I've found my way home only to end up lost in a muck or lying across rickety train tracks, praying for deliverance and not knowing if that would mean getting run over or being spared; "experience," which is a neutral word that most people know only means something good on a resume, a term that in the rest of life is more like a criminal rap sheet full of mishaps that cannot be expunged, this indelible quality made more frightening because there are no authorities keeping track, no one is forcing you to remember these things, it is all your own fault, it is only you who cannot forget; "experience," which is supposed to be the playground and peep show and life-size labyrinth of adolescence, which can, when it occurs at the right time in life...if it is delivered in moderate and judicious measure...make you a more capable lover and friend, spouse and partner.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
You are changing the world with your thoughts, actions, and creation.
Debasish Mridha
He laughed and it sounded startled and a bit rusty, as if he didn't do that very often.
Amanda McCabe
After all, tomorrow will be prettier than today. It all depends on your choices and actions, and if you are ready to make it.
Debasish Mridha
Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.Focus on your character, not your reputation.Focus on your blessings, not your misfortunes.
Roy T. Bennett
I found a way to see in the dark. Close your eyes.
J.R. Rim
The negotiations were simultaneously cerebral and physical, abstract and personal, something like a combination of chess and mountain climbing.
Richard Holbrooke
He that rides his hobby gently must always give way to him that rides his hobby hard.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart.
Alex de Campi
Shamu and I have arrived safely in Costa Rica. He was stopped by airport security because he carries enough artillery in his pants pockets to construct a sawed-off shotgun. Evidently, he thought we were headed to Iraq.
Chelsea Handler
'Nothing can make death easier,' Cala said, 'but silence can make it harder.' 'Speaking helps not,' Maia said.
Katherine Addison
One of the fastest ways to move through your pain is to get a grip on reality.
Bryant McGill
A gentleman holds my hand.A man pulls my hair.A soulmate will do both.
Alessandra Torre
Peace is a fresh flower.
Debasish Mridha
I thought we weren't actually dead?", I asked. There was a lot of ambiguity surrounding that subject. We weren't mortal anymore. That was for sure. I could swing by my grave and prove that anytime I wanted. But, we had bodies with needs. And could get hurt or killed. And, though, I've been told we didn't age, my hair continued to grow. I still woke up hungry in the morning, and watch out, if I didn't get a cup of coffee. It was like we were straddling some invisible fence between immortality and human frailty. t"Seriously, are we dead or not? I asked again when I still received no response. I got several yes's and no's at the same time confirming my own belief. Somehow, we were neither.
Donna Augustine
The natural gods of men are other men, mythic or real, who embody manhood in men's eyes.
Jack Donovan
I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall.
Michael Lee West
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Robert Benchley
Deep inside of us we all know there is someone we were meant to be.
David Kessler
Walling herself off circumvented the risk of real closeness between two people and the eventual, unavoidable loss that always accompanies love. Liberating herself from the concern of others served a sinister purpose as well. There were fewer people to whom Anna was accountable. It’s the easiest way to lie and not get caught: make yourself matter to no one
Jill Alexander Essbaum
I heard ‘naked’ and ‘full of hot air.’ I try not to let that be my first impression of anyone.
Kathy Bryson
After the monkeys came down from the trees and learned to hurl sharp objects, they had had to move into caves for protection--not only from the big predatory cats but, as they began to lose their monkey fur, from the elements. Eventually, they started transposing their hunting fantasies onto cave walls in the form of pictures, first as an attempt at practical magic and later for the strange, unexpected pleasure they discovered in artistic creation. Time passed. Art came off the walls and turned into ritual. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present mindless, voracious trajectory, could land those of us lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.
Tom Robbins
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it.
Henry David Thoreau
A teenage girl lay asleep on the sofa, curled up under a red-and-black knitted afghan. She was on her side, with one slender arm cradling a throw cushion nestled under her head. Long wavy blond hair spread across her back and her shoulders like a cape. Even though she was sleeping, Alex could see how pretty she was, with her delicate, almost elfin features. He stood in the doorway, watching the soft rise and fall of her chest.
l.a weatherly
The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.
Sol Luckman
When you love, you change the world.You bring tranquility, harmony, and joy.You attract beauty of angel inside you.Your heart sings the song of love.
Debasish Mridha
Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don't fucking drink it.
Rory Freedman
...I also have an extended family. The people who stayed. The people who became more than friends; the people who open the door when I knock. That's what it all boils down to. The people who have to open the door, not because they always want to but because they do.
Diane Keaton
Mercia wasn’t a little-in-love sort of man. He was mad, dark passion, sweeping emotion, and complete loss of reason, with his gaunt male beauty, his wealth and power, and his haunted past.
Grace Burrowes
Few realize how loud their expressions really are. Be kind with what you wordlessly say.
Richelle E. Goodrich
A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.
Lisa Kleypas
I'd rather be thin than famousbut I'm fatpaste that in your broadway show
Jack Kerouac
He'd changed since the last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he wore a button-down shirt, khaki pants, and leather loafers. His sandy hair, which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He look like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year.
Rick Riordan
If his drunkenness had legs, it would be Alexander the Great and conquer the known world. Then it would puke for a week into a solid gold toilet it stole from Zeus's guest room.
Richard Kadrey
The more choices you have, the more your values matter.
Michael Schrage
It’s a funny thing to complain about, but most of America is perfectly devoid of smells. I must have noticed it before, but this last time back I felt it as an impairment. For weeks after we arrived I kept rubbing my eyes, thinking I was losing my sight or maybe my hearing. But it was the sense of smell that was gone. Even in the grocery store, surrounded in one aisle by more kinds of food than will ever be known in a Congolese lifetime, there was nothing on the air but a vague, disinfected emptiness. I mentioned this to Anatole, who’d long since taken note of it, of course. “The air is just blank in America,” I said. “You can’t ever smell what’s around you, unless you stick your nose right down into something."“Maybe that is why they don’t know about Mobutu,” he suggested.
Barbara Kingsolver
They knew, though, she would not suffer as they had suffered. She was perfect. They were scarred.
Francesca Lia Block
Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,worthy of Kubla Khan's Xanadu dome;Plushy and swanky, with posh hanky pankythat affluent Yankees can really callhome.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,a push-button palace, fluorescent repose;Electric devices for facing a crisiswith frozen fruit ices and cinema shows.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelterall chromium kitchens and rubber-tiled dorms;With waterproof portals to echo the chortlesof weatherproof mortals in hydrogen storms.What a great come-to-glory emporium!To enjoy a deluxe moratorium,Where nuclear heat can beguile the elitein a creme-de-la-creme crematorium.
E.Y. Harburg
The more we accept the imperfections of life, the more perfect life seems to become.
Russell Kyle
You know, Piggly Wiggly never could hang on to a night stock manager. Your math skills would be a plus, maybe even your Spanish, and you don't mind staying up late.""Piggly Wiggly, wow. I hadn't thought about that. I'll swing by, pick up an application tomorrow. But if it doesn't pan out maybe ... Never mind, it's a crazy idea.""No, tell me. I want to hear it.""Well, just as a backup plan, I did hear that Sony has an opening. They're, um, they're looking for a rock star. The hours suck, but it's no worse than night stock manager at Pigs. I bet it pays better too."Isabel stopped in her tracks, playfully slapping his arm. "Aidan, that's genius! That's what you should do! I've heard you sing, you can carry a decent tune." She looked him up and down. "With a little work, you can probably pull off the image."He tugged on her arms until she was in his. "Only if you're sure. Only if it's what we want.""Aidan, it's who you are. I've known it since the day we brought that first guitar here. I'd never want to take that away.
Laura Spinella
I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.
Aberjhani
For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere).
Bill Bryson
Seek goodness and be goodness. Seek beauty and be beauty. Seek love and be love.
Bryant McGill
Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
Ambrose Bierce
When I was alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. (...) You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that — then any time at all will be the right time for you.
Peter S Beagle
We are all creative beings. The act of creating puts us in direct connection with the greatest creator. The master artist that is our Divine Creator.
Eileen Anglin
Prayer isn't an excuse to sin.
Tessa Bailey
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social enviroment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions.", 1953)
Albert Einstein
All adventurous women do.
Lena Dunham
The Holy Spirit’s desire is that we become more and more dependent upon Him for every step. That’s because He wants to take us to places we’ve never been before. To heights we can’t even imagine!
Stormie Omartian
Adversity will always show up but it doesn't always have to come up.
Johnnie Dent Jr.
When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it.I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened.And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that.The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.
Carol O'Connell
You think he left a big flashing arrow pointing to a filing cabinet labeled 'Evidence Here!'? He's a Stray, Ethan, not Wile E. Coyote!
Rachel Vincent
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant/Success in Circuit lies...
Emily Dickinson
We need to take turns - it's the kind thing to do.
Lorraine Loria