Quotes by American Authors - Page 473

It’s OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.
Mandy Hale
When you're on a Ferris wheel all anyone ever talks about is being on the Ferris wheel and the view from the Ferris wheel and whether the Ferris wheel is scary and how many more times it will go around. Dating is like that. Nobody who's doing it ever talks about anything else. I have no interest in dating.
John Green
For you and me today is all we have tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.
Louis L'Amour
He who hesitates is last.
Mae West
You can either complain about how hard your life is, or you can realize that only you are responsible for it.
Glenn Beck
Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt
You have shown me, along with that man over there, that life and love aren't as far apart as we think. They go hand-in-hand, like you and me. You can't have one without the other. Everything around us, inside of us, is love. It's in the birds and the rivers, the newborn baby whimpers, and yes, the passionate kisses we share. Life is a package wrapped up in love. To experience love, we have to open it. Carefully. And cherish every gift we're given.
Marilyn Grey
Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: The realm. Do you know what the realm is? It's the thousand blades of Aegon's enemies, a story we agree to tell each other over and over, until we forget that it's a lie.Lord Varys: But what do we have left, once we abandon the lie? Chaos? A gaping pit waiting to swallow us all.Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish: Chaos isn't a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them. And some, are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.
George R.R. Martin
(On his addiction to opiods): I'll die young, but it's like kissing God.
Lenny Bruce
Shane was sitting on the curb next to the old, cracked gas pumps, eating a candy bar. Claire plopped down next to him. “Half?” she asked.“And now I know you’re my girlfriend, since you’re not afraid to demand community property,” he said, and pulled off the uneaten half to hand it over.
Rachel Caine
I have to go to her, Lucan. For my own sanity, if nothing else. If I stay here, I'm not sure what good I'd be, to tell you the truth. She's the only thing that's held me together in a very long time. I'm a wreck for this woman, my friend. She owns me now.
Lara Adrian
As an adult, emerging from the ether's of an abusive childhood, i found myself left with a constant craving for protection, safety and security. I spent many years living my life, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I needed to control everything, in an effort to prevent any harm from coming my way (even though control is an illusion).It took me many years to realize i had to become that safe harbor for myself. And that part of becoming that safe harbor was not about avoiding life, but rather, developing the confidence and coping skills to know that i would have what it takes to find my way through life's inevitable trials and tribulations.
Jaeda DeWalt
Whatever doubt might rise, he knew that he was right. But the rightness was an intellectual rightness and the doubt emotional.
Clifford D. Simak
Did you know that true love asks for nothing? Her Acceptance is the way we pay.
Stevie Wonder
The girl and Doctor Reefy began their courtship on a summer afternoon. He was forty-five then and already he had begun the practice of filling his pockets with the scraps of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away. The habit had been formed as he sat in his buggy behind the jaded white horse and went slowly along country roads. On the papers were written thoughts, ends of thoughts, beginnings of thoughts.One by one the mind of Doctor Reefy had made the thoughts. Out of many of them he formed a truth that arose gigantic in his mind. The truth clouded the world. It became terrible and then faded away and the little thoughts began again.("Paper Pills")
Sherwood Anderson
Doing the things you hate is living in a world of sin. Hell is staying in the place Jesus saved you from. That is, to live on your own, without God.
J.R. Rim
I think the function of suffering is to let me know that my perception is skewed; what I’m doing is judging natural events in such a way that I am creating suffering within myself. For instance, you have pain over certain conditions, certain situations that occur. And if you just say ‘ok, here I am, I’m going to experience the pain,’ you don’t suffer. The resistance and the degree of the resistance to the natural phenomenon of life causes tremendous suffering.
Hubert Selby Jr.
It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint and he understands ours then we can sit down and work out our differences.
Harry S. Truman
Sitting up, Jocelyn rolled her head from side to side. “Been better.” “Heard you’re a doctor now.” She grabbed the thermometer.“Yes, a veterinarian.”Placing her fist on her ample hip, Mia scoffed, “You go to that fancy school in Washington State and now you don’t eat meat?” “Good Lord! I’m not a vegetarian—
Patricia W. Fischer
The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution. Effective execution will set you free. It is the path to accomplish the things you desire.
Brian P. Moran
The house that does not comfort the needy is worthy of naught but destruction.
Kahlil Gibran
Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.
Martin Scorsese
Gang members have joined the military since the mid-1800s.
Carter F. Smith
No one leaves this hidden treasure,Feeling the same way they came,They always refer their friends to this Gem,This island with a beautiful name,My beautiful “Bim”—Barbados
Charmaine J.Forde
Discomfort is the sign, you are on right track.
Jeff Goins
Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.
Priya Ardis
There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.
Billy Graham
The human mind’s innate ability to imagine and create ensures that we never remain stalled out in who we are. We constantly seek to amend our circumference and circumstances, craft and redraft our emotional, social, political, economic, and artistic being.
Kilroy J. Oldster
We live in a world of constant noise which captures our minds even when we are not aware of it
Joost A.M. Meerloo
And that was part of the tragedy: I had just started to know her. I was mourning the relationship that could have blossomed but didn’t have a chance to grow.
Sy Montgomery
In my experience nursing is waiting. The mother becomes the background against which the baby lives, becomes time. I used to exist against the continuity of time. Then I became the baby's continuity, a background of ongoing time for him to live against. I was the warmth and milk that was always there for him, the agent of comfort that was always there for him. My body, my life, became the landscape of my son's life. I am no longer merely a thing living in the world; I am a world.
Sarah Manguso
Who are you?” I whispered, leaning forward and reaching across the table to touch his sternly gorgeous face, almost afraid he’d disappear beneath my fingertips. “The face of an angel, the soul of a poet, and the fists of a fighter. I don’t know how to understand you, Mickey.”Mickey caught my hand with his and then turned his head and pressed a soft kiss in my palm. “I’m not the only poet at this table.
Lucy Connors
Today is the first day in history.-One of Nathan's Daily GemsFrom the 'Book Store ON Main Street'Seal Beach, CA
Diana Hollingsworth Gessler
As he stood there lost in reflection, Auclair thought he seemed more like a man revolving plans for a new struggle with fortune than one looking back upon a life of brilliant features. The Count had the bearing of a fencer when he takes up the foil; from his shoulders to his heels there was intention and direction. His carriage was his unconscious idea of himself, -- it was an armour he put on when he took off his night-cap in the morning, and he wore it all day, at early mass, at his desk, on the march, at the Council, at his dinner-table. Even his enemies relied upon his strength.
Willa Cather
He believed in magic, like a child, and in ghosts, like a peasant.
Laini Taylor
In the Code of Canon Law, it states clearly: 'A person who is conscious of grave sin is not to celebrate Mass or receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession.' I haven’t attended confession in well over a decade, and that’s less because of dogmatic conflict than it is because of moral cowardice. Deeper than that, maybe I don’t want to be forgiven. I want to be punished. Which may be just about the most selfish, egotistical thought I’ve ever had. I’m sick with self-love. Or self-loathing. After all, they’re both essentially the same thing.
Phillip Andrew Bennett Low
When you're younger you're so happy to get some good loving you convince yourself you're in love, can't live with out it, and chase the dick like a crack addict after the pipe, or chase the bad sex hoping something happened to the man over night and the next time it'll be good.
Jill Nelson
The leaves of the world comprise countless billion elaborations of a single, simple machine designed for one job only – a job upon which hinges humankind. Leaves make sugar. Plants are the only things in the universe that can make sugar out of nonliving inorganic matter. All the sugar that you have ever eaten was first made within a leaf. Without a constant supply of glucose to your brain, you will die. Period. Under duress, your liver can make glucose out of protein or fat – but that protein or fat was originally constructed from a plant sugar within some other animal. It’s inescapable: at this very moment, within the synapses of your brain, leaves are fueling thoughts of leaves.
Hope Jahren
We mustn't be afraid of inventing anything...Everething there is in us exists in nature. After all, we're part of nature. If it resembles nature, that's fine. If it doesn't, what of it? When man wanted to invent something as useful as the human foot, he invented the wheel, which he used to transport himself and his burdens. The fact that the wheel doesn't have the slightest resemblance to the human foot is hardly a criticism of it.
Françoise Gilot
I’m learning geography is about lossand so I keep moving
Paul Guest
My father warned me that you’re an interloper. He told me I should make you leave, since we’re no longer married and you’re not my concern,” he says. The thought gives me a chill. Yes, I’m sure Vaughn would love for his son to abandon me, so that Vaughn can swoop in and reclaim me the second I’m alone. But Linden adds, “I told him that wouldn’t be a good idea either.
Lauren DeStefano
if you think you can organize your own salvation you are magnifying the very sin that keeps you from it.
David Brooks
...fool me once, shame on me…fool me twice…I deserved to get fucked over.
Derekica Snake
Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?
Donna Tartt
You fix what's broken, not what's lost. He's gone. You can't fix that. You can't bring him back. But you can fix yourself; you can put yourself back together and not be the person who did that anymore. And I think that's maybe the key, because you can say sorry until you're blue in the face, but it doesn't count until they see repentance.
J.M. Darhower
See, the institutions and specialist, experts, you see. Yes, yes,experts, indeed. See, they would have us believe that there is an orderto art. An explanation. Humans are odd creatures in that way. Alwayssearching for a formula. Yes, a formula to create an expected norm forunexplainable greatness. A cook book you might say. Yes, a recipebook for life, love, and art. However, my dear, let me tell you. Yes,there is no such thing. Every individual is unique in their own design,as intended by God himself. We classify, yes, always must we classify,for if not, then we would be lost, yes lost now wouldn't we?Classification, order, expectations, but alas, we forget. For what is art,if not the out word expression of an artist. It is the soul of the artisanand if his expectations are met, than who are we to judge whether hiswork be art or not?
Cristina Marrero
I’ve had the great pleasure of meeting Newt Gingrich and having a chat with the fellow on a staircase,” ex–Sex Pistols vocalist John Lydon once told Rolling Stone. “I found him completely dishonest and totally likable, because he doesn’t care.
Chuck Klosterman
They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I am isolated. I sit in a glass ball, I see people through a glass wall. I scream, but they do not hear me.- Ellen West
Carl R. Rogers
Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact, power has no sex.
Katherine Graham
Be awesome! Be calm and magnificent like the moon.
Debasish Mridha
He never complained. He seemed to have no instinct for the making much of oneself that complaining requires.
Wendell Berry
You will be a great queen when you come back, you know. And someday you'll love me the way you love your wolf.
Carrie Jones
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan
An unhealthy life is destined to end with an unhealthy death.
Nancy S. Mure
I hated myself for needing him at such times, for craving his strength whenever I felt upset.
Kathy Reichs
Eventually he understood that he was crying for himself. He was ashamed of the man whom he had become, mourning the man whom he had expected to be when he'd been a boy.
Dean Koontz
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
Daniel Webster
I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.
Mitch Albom
The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.
Tim O'Brien