Quotes by American Authors - Page 527

I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.
Sarah J Maas
Revenge was a dish best eaten cold, but eight years between was arctic.
Jonathan Kellerman
Sorcerers believe that an action taken for the right reasons has an unreasonable chance of success.
Gail Carson Levine
It's not what you do but that kind of job you do that makes the difference.
Ben Carson
Raven: "You don't have a hot date, do you?"Alexander: "Yes. I do, as a matter of fact."Raven: "You do?"Alexander: "Yes, and it is almost ending.
Ellen Schreiber
You don't have to be fast. But you'd better be fearless.
Christopher McDougall
The ability to experience bliss requires the gift of attentive awareness, curiosity, and constant learning. We are ultimately the product of what we want – our personal obsessions – and how we think. Thoughts merge into feelings that determine if we are happy or sad. Feelings can manifest into thoughts that drive our ambitions and guide our personal actions, which enable us to live an intensified life.
Kilroy J. Oldster
She had gills while other people were breathing with lungs. There was, however, no point in dwelling on it, as it was too later to grow up differently.
Sonja Yoerg
There is a way that the men speak to women that reminds me too much of Pa. They listen just long enough to issue instructions. They don’t even look at women when women are speaking. They look at the ground and bend their heads toward the ground.
Alice Walker
He stood there a moment, listened to the creek, and let the mountain air blow against his face. Even with all this heartache, it was beautiful here.
Eowyn Ivey
I'm a romantic.
Tom Cruise
Notice I did not say what people can do--what we can do is merely a consequence of what we can be.
Max DePree
Was he a good father?"To their surprise, I shake my head and smile. "No," I reply candidly. "He wasn't a good father, but he was a good man."Where Dad came from, that meant a great deal more.
Deana Martin
To be successful at anything, it takes hard work, discipline, dedication, and a burning desire to be the best.
Zeke Jones
A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.
Russell Baker
Why, what is it, how can flesh and blood come up with such stuff, how can flesh feel it. My lord life is strange. How is that Meaning comes to be? How? How does life cast it up, shape it, exude it; how does Meaning come to have physical, tangible effects, to be felt with a shock, to cause grief or longing, come to be sought for like food; pure Meaning having nothing to do with the clothes of persons or events in which it is dressed and yet not ever divorceable from some set of such clothes?
John Crowley
Yes, it's vital to make lifestyle choices to mitigate damage caused by being a member of industrialized civilization, but to assign primary responsibility to oneself, and to focus primarily on making oneself better, is an immense copout, an abrogation of responsibility.
Derrick Jensen
I look for a sign. Where to go next. you never know when you'll get one. Even the most faithless among us are waiting to be proven wrong.
Jillian Lauren
But guilt isn't smart. It isn't logical. It doesn't only live in the places it belongs.
Ally Carter
When intent is rooted in pure love, you dreams will grown and manifest faster than you could ever imagine.
Dawn Gluskin
Expect the unexpected, my mother once said. Because the unexpected most certainly will be expecting you.
Marjorie M. Liu
When I think good thoughts, I feel that man is not, after all, so bad.
Sri Chinmoy
Takes a lot of tries before you hit perfection." He paused to reconsider that. "Well, except for my parents. They got it on the first try." (Adrian)
Richelle Mead
Gratitude opens our mind to accept more and fills our heart to give more.
Debasish Mridha
You want me as much as I want you. And all I want is you."My tongue warred with my mind. "Today," I whispered.Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. "Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever.
Michelle Hodkin
The curtains were blood-red and drawn. This was not an office. It was a small library, two storeys high, with thin ladders and impractical balconies and an expansive ceiling featuring a gaggle of naked Greeks. It was the sort of library you'd marry a man for.
Catherine Lowell
Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear.
Ann Patchett
That, after all, is what the great stories are written about: How people manage to find themselves in love. Well let me just say that how a person falls in love is more important than who they fall in love with, for to truly fall in love with someone else, you must first fall in love with yourself. The process a person goes through to break down his or her outer shell and let love in is often as miraculous as the mystery of falling in love.
Sage Steadman
Her need is so immense that you become surrounded by it; this need is so enormous that you realize you can actually control it, and I know this because I've done it before.
Bret Easton Ellis
It is always easier to find your sense of value by demeaning another’s value. It is easier to define yourself as ‘not that,’ rather than do an actual accounting of your own qualities and put them on the scale.
Jessa Crispin
I'd rather make a show 100 people need to see, than a show that 1000 people want to see.
Joss Whedon
Psychiatry is a strange field because, unlike any other field of medicine, you never really finish. Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I'm still learning.
IRVIN D.YALOM
It’s a great honor, m’ijo. We know that. I’m sure everyone in Ysleta is proud of you. But this is who you are," she said, for a moment scanning the dark night air and the empty street. A cricket chirped in the darkness. "God help you when you go to this ‘Havid.’ You will be so far away from us, from everything you know. You will be alone. What if something happens to you? Who’s going to help you? But you always wanted to be alone; you were always so independent, so stubborn.""Like you.
Sergio Troncoso
A woman could be as beautiful as she felt herself to be.
Laura Lee Guhrke
[The sound of the wind] was just more proof that the workings of the world were random, that beauty, like suffering, was meaningless, that human life was as pointless as waves on sand.
Anita Diamant
Confusion is a luxury which only the very, very young can possibly afford and you are not that young anymore
James Baldwin
I tossed a stone into the Sea To see what it would do for me And the ripples went out And became ocean waves To return to the Sea inside of me
Mark A.Y. Nunez
Dogs are like that, I guess—they know how to fix you without ever saying a word.
Caroline George
Yes,' Spade growled. 'And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it.' He released Cairo's wrist and with a thick open hand struck the side of his face three times savagely.
Dashiell Hammett
Nothing, they say is more certain than death, and nothing more uncertain than the time of dying
Thomas Paine
As a consequence of the enormous social and technological changes of the last few centuries, the world is not working well. We do not live in traditional and static societies. But our government, in resisting change, act as if we did. Unless we destroy ourselves utterly, the future belongs to those societies that, while not ignoring the reptilian and mammalian parts of our being, enable the characteristically human components of our nature to flourish; to those societies that encourage diversity rather than conformity; to those societies willing to invest resources in a variety of social, political, economic and cultural experiments, and prepared to sacrifice short-term advantage for long-term benefit; to those societies that treat new ideas as delicate, fragile and immensely valuable pathways to the future.
Carl Sagan
The town , wrapped in red and green, greeted him, welcome him home as he drove down familiar streets. Driving his old truck filled Hunter with pleasure. He didn't have to look for IEDs on the side of the road. He grinned all the way to the apartment, enjoying the ride, the peace of the nigh, the old brick buildings on Main Street, the holiday finery, the palpable presence of town spirit.tHe parked his truck in front of the apartment building that Ethan owned as a side business, and suddenly couldn't wait another second. He hurried up the front stairs, down the inside styaircase, then just about ran down the hallway to his basement-level unit.tHe had his key in his hand, but the doorknob turned easily as he put his hand on it. Cindy had left the door open for him.tHe grinned like a fool as he walked in. The loose floorboard in the middle of the living room creaked a familiar welcome as he passed his army duffel bag on the floor where he'd dumped it earlier. Cindy's little pink purse sat on his brown leather couch like a cupcake on a tray.t"Cindy?" He strode toward the bedroom in the back, his smile spreading as he anticipated a private party. If she was waiting for him naked in bed, the proposal would have to wait a litt. "Honey?"tBut she wasn't waiting for him naked.tShe was waiting for him dead.
Dana Marton
She opened her eyes and touched her lips, as though he had just kissed them. She could taste him.
Jean M. Grant
Dreams won't always take you on a straight path to destiny but they're usually related to what your soul wants for you. They'll force you to ask yourself the hard questions, they'll kick your ass and more importantly, they'll turn you on.
Kelly Cutrone
There's no present left. This is the problem for a novelist. [The problem] is the present is gone. We're all living in the future constantly . . . Back in the day Leo Tolstoy -- what a sweetheart of a count and of a writer -- in the 1860's he wanted to write about the Napoleonic Campaign, about 1812. If you write about 1812 in 1860, a horse is still a horse. A carriage is still a carriage. Obviously, there are been some technological advancements, et cetera, but you don't have to worry about explaining the next killer [iPhone] app or the next Facebook because right now things are happening so quickly. ("Gary Shteyngart: Finding 'Love' In A Dismal Future", NPR interview, August 2, 2010)
Gary Shteyngart
I was still sitting there, too unsure of myself to say anything, when Nicolas kissed me.'Let's go to bed,' he said softly.
Anne Rice
big-bang reproduction, or semelparity: a single reproductive effort, followed by preprogrammed death.
Jared Diamond
You knew me before I made my millions, and you were nice to me when you didn’t have to be. That’s the kind of person I want in my corner.
Kelly Moran
What is grace? I'm not certain; all I know is that my heart felt like a spike, and then, in that room, it opened and felt like an umbrella.
Tom Junod
It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.
Alex Filippenko
Beware of those who are too focused with polishing and beautifying their outer shells. They lack true substance to understand that genuine beauty is reflected from the heart that resides inside.
Suzy Kassem
In all modern depressions recessions or growth-correction as variously they are called we never miss the goods that are not produced. We miss only the opportunities for the labour - for the jobs - that are not provided.
J. K. Galbraith
Learning, without any opportunities to share what we've learned, is a little like cooking for ourselves; we do it, but we probably won't do it as well.
Mike Schmoker
It's almost relaxing to know I'll die fairly soon, as it's a comfort not to obsess about my next orgasm.
Donald Hall
If you are only focused on the Money... You risk completely overlooking the People.
Ted Rubin
But how could anyone be grateful for what they have if they didn’t know what it was like not to have what they need?
Josephine Angelini
It's choice - not chance - that determines your destiny.
Jean Nidetch
There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams
...to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender...
Rebecca Solnit
Piece of Heaven?" "No, that other place I'm going to go to for thinking what I'm thinking.
Richelle Mead