Quotes by American Authors - Page 495

Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.
Charles Bukowski
One must lose one's life in order to find it.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Kindle, isn’t it?” the waitress asked. “I got one for Christmas, and I love it. I’m reading my way through all of Jodi Picoult’s books.” “Oh, probably not all of them,” Wesley said. “Huh? Why not?” “She’s probably got another one done already. That’s all I meant.” “And James Patterson’s probably written one since he got up this morning!” she said, and went off chortling.
Stephen King
It’s become clear that our gadgets give us ever more freedom to do anything our socially isolated little hearts desire—except stop using them.
Steve Thorngate
What none of them knew, of course, was that Carrie White was telekinetic.
Stephen King
This was the purest instant he had ever experienced; the way he felt inside right then. If he had to be trapped in a forever he would choose this very moment. The black night, the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare trees, the beautiful dark-eyed woman drinking whiskey, the way she gazed at him, the way she made him feel.
Alice Hoffman
Sharing is an inherent sign of growth.
Debasish Mridha
...because if you can make yourself happy in the rain then you're doing pretty alright in life.
David Levithan
Language can only deal meaningfully with a special, restricted segment of reality. The rest, and it is presumably the much larger part, is silence.
George Steiner
How easy it was to slip through the cracks alongside him. To fall in the very same trap I had committed to free him from.
Jonathan Friesen
If we're afraid to be ourselves, then who are we? Where's there left to hide?But if we could concur that fear, we just might be strong, powerful. We just might be unstoppable.
Veronica Roth
I was a ghost on a ghost ship in a ghost land
Maria Semple
In Hollywood if you don't have a shrink, people think you're crazy.
Johnny Carson
Try to embrace, or let yourself be embraced by, boredom and anguish, which anyhow are larger than you. No doubt you'll find that bosom smothering, yet try to endure it as long as you can, and then some more. Above all, don't think you've goofed somewhere along the line, don't try to retrace your steps to correct the error. No, as the poet said, "Believe your pain." This awful bear is no mistake. Nothing that disturbs you is. Remember all along that there is no embrace in this world that won't finally unclasp.
Joseph Brodsky
Diet corresponding to blood type, not food hype.
T.F. Hodge
Future strong individuals will not take on personal sacrifices, hardships and corporate crap that sidetrack them from their dreams and goals.
Bill Jensen
Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
Alan W. Watts
Every time my dreams threaten to become reality, something always happens and I end up alone.
Jane Green
Life is made of so many moments that mean nothing. Then one day, a single moment comes along to define every second that comes after. Such moments are tests of courage, of strength.
Sabaa Tahir
What I remember most about those days is how happy we all were. When I think back on my life growing up on Terra d’Amore, tides of warm memories wash over me like the waves of the Mediterranean. Our little farm, nestled in the hills and valleys of Montecalvo just outside Bologna, was idyllic. Indeed, it was an Italian paradise...a veritable heaven.
Giacomino Nicolazzo
Never dull your shine for somebody else.
Tyra Banks
When you come up a bit short on excellence, you still win. When you strive for perfect, you’re just never quite good enough.
Dawn Gluskin
I touched the moon last night;a golden glow beyond my grasp.Eons before me it rested there.It will remain when I am dust.My hand now glows from the embrace.Voices echo through nights past,and with the glow, caress my face.My finger faints from what will last.Alone I am; alone secure;the moon will last when I am gone.A Master set it in its’ place,to move the tide, refresh the dawn.Unnumbered eyes have felt its rest;have looked upon reflected light.My heart is moved away from pain;I touched the moon last night.
Craig Froman
What thief does not fight to hold what he has?""One that has something better" - Locke Lamora to the Gray king
Scott Lynch
Ben let a slow smile play over his face. He loved this part. It always felt like revealing to a disbeliever that he had magical powers or something.
Jay Bell
My African roots made me what I am today. They’re the reason I’m from the Dominican Republic. They’re the reason I exist at all. To these roots I owe everything.
Junot Díaz
He looked so frustrated and perfectly serious, and yet here we were talking about his missing seal pelt.
Katherine McIntyre
I shall speak of love...and of hate.It is truly a marvel, but I tell you, hatred and love may live cramped together, crouching in the same heart.
M.T Anderson
You've gotta stop calling each sl*ts and wh*r*s. That just makes it more okay for GUYS to call you sl*ts and wh*r*s.
Tina Fey
Shovels aren't very glamorous, but they've been liberating entire communities from malaria for the past 5,000 years.
T.K. Naliaka
When a man is pushed tormented defeated he has a chance to learn something he has been put on his wits on his manhood he has gained the facts learned his ignorance is cured of the insanity of conceit has got moderation and real skill.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I understand that you come from a generation of women who had to work hard to be heard, but for you to impugn my feminism and act as though I'm a scourge upon women everywhere, just because I refuse to spread your particular agenda? That's dark, and it's not what you fought for. If you continue this way, you're worse than they are (they = men). We are all just trying to get by. There is room for all of us.
Lena Dunham
Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
It seems the more we know, the less we believe.
J.S.B. Morse
Last nightthe rainspoke to meslowly, saying, what joyto come fallingout of the brisk cloud, to be happy againin a new wayon the earth! That’s what it saidas it dropped, smelling of iron, and vanishedlike a dream of the oceaninto the branchesand the grass below.Then it was over.The sky cleared.I was standingunder a tree.The tree was a treewith happy leaves, and I was myself, and there were stars in the skythat were also themselvesat the momentat which momentmy right handwas holding my left handwhich was holding the treewhich was filled with starsand the soft rain –imagine! imagine! the long and wondrous journeysstill to be ours.
Mary Oliver
When used as a tool, fear will enhance your preparedness; when used as a guide, it will stop your progress.
Steve Maraboli
There isn’t a parallel of latitude but thinks it would have been the equator if it had had its rights.
Mark Twain
The outer world is a reflection of our inner selves.
Bryant McGill
Listen. In every office you hear the threads of love and joy and fear and guilt, the cries for celebration and reassurance, and somehow you know that connecting those threads is what you are supposed to do and business takes care of itself.
Susan Scott
Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you.
Robert A. Heinlein
As contagion of sickness makes sickness contagion of trust can make trust.
Marianne Moore
The thing I regret the most is that I cannot help everyone who really needs it.
Debasish Mridha
I have butchered many men. All are innocent and equaled when they are on the table. All are exquisite and grotesque. -Dr. Spencer Black
E.B. Hudspeth
Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun.
George Scialabba
Dishonesty is never justified. God will never approve, and even your own conscience will rise up to condemn you sooner or later.
Billy Graham
Beneath the rust and grime which dulls the shine of our weathered hearts, joy patiently waits to be rediscovered
John Mark Green
Enlightenment is at the source of everything. From it, flows our Intuition and our creative energy. It is the delta of the human spirit ~ what we innately seek to return to, as we find ourselves lost in this world.
Kim Chestney
Pointing directly at your own heart, you find Buddha.
Pema Chödrön
May you know always that you are never alone, that life and love are eternal, and that you are extraordinary.
Susan Barbara Apollon
For 'wellness', naturally is no cause of complaint--people relish it, they enjoy it, they are at the furthest pole from complaint. People complain of feeling ill--not well. Unless, as George Eliot does, they have some intimation of 'wrongness' or danger, either through knowledge or association, or the very excess of excess. Thus, though a patient will scarcely complain of being 'very well', they may become suspicious if they feel 'too well'.
Oliver Sacks
The secret is in realizing your internal gifts and then setting them free.
Bryant McGill
You are never as good as you think you are, and you are never as bad as you believe yourself to be.
Chris Matakas
The process of putting the thing you value most in the world out for the assessment of strangers is a confidence-shaking business even in the best of times. But in Lucy's circumstances it was sheer heroism, a real sign of her devotion to her art. She was, in a sense, sitting at a craps table with her last stack of chips, trying again and again to hit it big.
Ann Patchett
The priest invents and encourages every kind of suffering and distress so that man may not have the opportunity to become scientific, which requires a considerable degree of free time, health, and an outlook of confident positivism. Thus, the religious authorities work hard to make and keep people feeling sinful, unworthy, and unhappy.
Robert Sheaffer
So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.
Elbert Hubbard
Will you wear my ring so all the world knows yer mine?"Beck wasn't asking for her hand in marriage, but it was so close he might as well be. Riley was deeply touched and she struggled to find the right words."Yes," she began. "I'd be proud to.
Jana Oliver
She might be the best-dressed little girl in her elementary school class, but she was still a Greek. Her parents spoke a foreign language, their food was different, and she looked different from the children she went to school with in Corktown.
Suzanne Jenkins
Let him then have powers commensurate with his utmost possible need, only let him be held strictly responsible for the exercise of them. Any other course would be injustice as well as bad policy
Richard Henry Dana Jr.
True law, the code of justice, the essence of our sensations of right and wrong, is the conscience of society. It has taken thousands of years to develop, and it is the greatest, the most distinguishing quality which has developed with mankind ... If we can touch God at all, where do we touch him save in the conscience? And what is the conscience of any man save his little fragment of the conscience of all men in all time?
Walter Van Tilburg Clark
Part of why I love these angry, straight, white punks is that they are stripping the dharma of its bullshit, and applying it to contexts and styles that, even if they aren’t mine, are at least different from the norm.
Jay Michaelson