Quotes by American Authors - Page 573

Communication works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest.
Sheryl Sandberg
I'm supposed to be a christian, but most days I don't feel like I can even presume to say that about myself any longer. I have a lot of mad left over. When I can't sleep, I think about the other people who didn't care how much pain and trouble they caused me. And I think about how good I'd feel if they died.
Charlaine Harris
There ain't no point in making soup unless others eat it. Soup needs another mouth to taste it, another heart to be warmed by it.
Kate DiCamillo
I've had an unhappy life thank God.
Russell Baker
Hatred has no place in your heart. Empathy does.
Evan Grinde
We had won the war, but when the insurgency reared its ugly head, we lost everything we had gained.
Kenneth Eade
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
Edgar Allan Poe
The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
You must carry on my spirit. It can no longer be carried by a god. It must be taken up by all of you. - Pan
Rick Riordan
He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.
Diana Gabaldon
A certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human brain - a malign and particular suspension or defeat of those laws of Nature which are our only safeguard against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space .... Therefore we must judge a weird tale not by the author's intent, or by the mere mechanics of the plot; but by the emotional level which it attains at its least mundane point... The one test of the really weird is simply this - whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.
H.P. Lovecraft
I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.
Bill Bryson
As a young man I started searching for my own identity by looking into family, friends and insideMyself. My mother always taught us to live free even when confined, meaning “never let anyone break you down physically or mentally.” Since my living environment was so heavily impacted with violence and illegal activity I found myself adapting to social norms that later in my adult life would negatively affect me. For example, certain physical reactions that were acceptable, as a child would give you a reputation on the street as tough guy, don’t mess with him. The same mentality later in life, as a man would label you as a predator of some sort and a woman abuser. It was hard to understand the true value of a man and all his worth and everything he is capable of achieving, when you’re surrounded by pimps, hustlers and con men that all may make more money than the men with trade jobs and have more of an appealing lifestyle for the short- term progress.
Rubin Scott
I lived in Miami for a while in a section with a lot of really old people. The average age in my apartment house was dead.
Gabe Kaplan
I might be old and ugly now, but you started that way, Jack.
Regina Sirois
He stabs his fingers through his drying hair and resumes his pacing. “You think I don’t know this went really fast? I didn’t plan for this to happen. Hell, I didn’t even know if you’d let me talk to you, much less be with you. But then you did and we did and…” He stops in the center of the room and stares at me, his shoulders sagging. “I figured out pretty quick that this is a forever thing for me. I think it has been from the very beginning.
Kate Avelynn
Everything is still everything.The Poem Remains.
R.M. Engelhardt (TALON)
Sing swan, Spring swan then lets fly.Follow the pretty bird across the sky.Call swan, Fall swan, then lets rest.Tucked in the branches of your quiet nest.
Shannon Messenger
Don’t tell them he’s upstairs , I commanded my brain. Tell them he moved to Pacoima to start a commune for vegetarian vampires. Tell them he’s looking into getting a sex-change operation and renaming himself Lulu Pleshette.
Molly Harper
Well, you know it’s my magic essence. -Mark Khiop
Akutra-Ramses Atenosis Cea
Forgiving is not about forgetting, it's letting go of the hurt
Mary McLeod Bethune
Jonathan's voice was quiet now. "Thank you for sharing this evening with me. In yoga, we say 'Namaste,' which means 'I bow to the divine in you.'" He bowed his dork-knobbed head and said, "Namaste." We bowed back and mumbled, "Namaste." On my tongue, the new word felt as though it contained its own foreign spice.
Claire Dederer
I couldn't suppress a smile. It was inconceivable that I was here, in a place as extraordinary as the fantasy books Sophie loved. Maybe...just maybe those stories are based on a measure of truth. Maybe one day I'd write our story.
Heather L. L. FitzGerald
After all these years, his best friend is malaria.Even on the brink of an Alaska summer, it comes calling: a bone-deep chill one night, a ministry of sweat the next. Calling him back to old battles.
Louis Bayard
I found myself tumbling down a 2000-foot face and my senses were so reduced. I couldn’t hear anything. It was totally peaceful. I was totally calm.
Travis Rice
Just remember - when you think all is lost, the future remains.
Robert H. Goddard
A prize-winning science reporter, Simons had become the number-two editor at the Post a year before. An intent, sensitive man with a large nose, thin face and deep-set eyes, he looks like the kind of Harvard teaching assistant who carries a slide ruler strapped to his belt. But he is skillful with fragile egos, and also the perfect counterpoint to Bradlee. Bradlee is more like Woodward: he wants hard information first and is impatient with theories.-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward
Carl Bernstein
She says I shall now have one mouth the more to fill and two feet the more to shoe, more disturbed nights, more laborious days, and less leisure or visiting, reading, music, and drawing.Well! This is one side of the story, to be sure, but I look at the other. Here is a sweet, fragrant mouth to kiss; here are two more feet to make music with their pattering about my nursery. Here is a soul to train for God; and the body in which it dwells is worth all it will cost, since it is the abode of a kingly tenant. I may see less of friends, but I have gained one dearer than them all, to whom, while I minister in Christ's name, I make a willing sacrifice of what little leisure for my own recreation my other darlings had left me. Yes, my precious baby, you are welcome to your mother's heart, welcome to her time, her strength, her health, her tenderest cares, to her lifelong prayers! Oh, how rich I am, how truly, how wondrously blest!
Elizabeth Payson Prentiss
Steaming, Sebastian flies up out of his seat and makes a dramatic exit out the front door."Is he always so crazy?" I asked."Yeah. But he's a hot fuck. You'll see.""No thanks... I'll pass. That kid's severely psychotic.""He's just a jealous mess.""Why did you marry him?""We're not married. We're in an open relationship.""Thank God. I was seriously worried.""YEAH. Well I better go find him- before he slits his wrists.""GOOD IDEA. Better take some duct tape-- just in case you're too late.
Giorge Leedy
If she actually had friends, maybe she wouldn't have turned out so nasty and evil.
Liz Braswell
In most states you can get a driver's license when you're sixteen years old which made a lot of sense to me when I was sixteen years old but now seems insane.
Phyllis Diller
Moreover, if great men are the only hope of the Evolutionary Process, they are morally bound to rule over the masses for their own good -- we are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know -- and the masses have no right whatsoever to resist them.
W.H. Auden
You can always tell how a man will treat his wife by the way he treats his mother.
Janette Rallison
This is our story to tell. He says it in his Ten Commandments way and it hits me that way: profoundly. You'd think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven't. I've never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always feel like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in ita telling whatsoever.You can tell your story any way you damn well please.It's your solo.
Jandy Nelson
Free time is a terrible thing to waste. Read a book.
E.A. Bucchianeri
And then she moved from shock to grief the way she might enter another room.
Anita Shreve
A wicked curve appears on his lips. “No, you’re wrong. I’m allowed to say whatever I want. What I’m not allowed to do is what I want.
Alex Rosa
Trying to figure it all out is impossible. But what isn’t impossible is to:Have gratitudeStay PositiveHave faithBe friendly and kindListen first; speak secondDo your best, not try to be the bestEnjoy the ride!
Charles F. Glassman
Oh, mercy, there is nothing monstrously ugly about you. Ruth may be unpleasing, but you are merely plain. If anything, it's my beauty that's monstrous, for it sweeps away any other aspect of my character.
Gregory Maguire
I could forgive you anything but taking my memories. You stepped over the line.
Donna Grant
The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Republicans has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the rest of us and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.
Garrison Keillor
What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.
Howard Zinn
When introverts go to church, we crave sanctuary in every sense of the word, as we flee from the disorienting distractions of twenty-first-century life. We desire to escape from superficial relationships, trivial communications and the constant noise that pervade our world, and find rest in the probing depths of God's love.
Adam S. McHugh
Then are there no rules at all, Lord?” Moneo's voice conveyed a faint hint of hysteria.Leto smiled to ease the man's tensions. “Perhaps one. Short–term decisions tend to fail in the long–term.
Frank Herbert
I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.
Pete Hamill
Once you have been to the cross, you will never be the same.
Billy Graham
In the midst of our struggle to find out who we are, there are infinite possibilities for beauty, and hope, and wonder, and love.
Mandy Hale
I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things.
Henry David Thoreau
The desire to be desire-less is but another desire. The thought that, because this desire purports to be spiritual, it is superior to more mundane desires shows how skilled the mind is at justifying any desire it is attached to.
Joel Kramer
Comedy is not the opposite of darkness, but its natural bedfellow. Pain makes laughter necessary; laughter makes pain tolerable.
Mindy Greenstein
Imagine that you are more than nothing. Evil made you, but you are no more evil than a child unborn. If you want, if you seek, if you hope, who is to say that your hope might not be answered?
Dean Koontz
You are likely the greatest obstacle to achieving your own dreams.
Bryant McGill
It might be your fate not to succeed, but your FAITH in you can change your fate.
Stephen Magnus
Yes Headwoman Azaze. But I never lie to Rosethorn. She, um, discourages it.""Evvy and I have an understanding." She grabbed the teakettle and poured hot water into the mug. "She tells me the truth, and I don't hang her in the first well we come to. It's a solution that works tolerably well for both of us.
Tamora Pierce
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must- in spite of personal consequences in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures-and that is the basis of all morality.
John F Kennedy
I have no hankerin’ for thrills if needs be sought in the heavens. I shall keep my feet firmly planted in contentment.
Quoleena Sbrocca
God not da faddah, he just the spoiled moody child, but you got to go t'rough him to get to da real power, his mama, Mot'er God. She da real Almighty! She run da heavens alone. Original single parent. When somethin' bad happen, usually mean she let God try his hand, and he screw up plenny. You need something important, you go directly Mot'er God. Jesus, Mary, Joseph? Dey just small potatoes, part of the chorus, neh?
Kiana Davenport
But at some point it becomes obvious that, ultimately, the adventure of faith is the most sensible thing to do, and in fact the only thing worth doing. As Sam says toward the end of The Two Towers, no one remembers the tales in which the characters give up and turn back. Great and heroic deeds remain undone if no one leaps into the dark to do them. That's true when it comes to faith, too. You can't play a meaningful role in the great story by playing it safe. Once you hit the road, there is no going back to life as it was before. When Jesus asks His disciples if they will leave him to, Peter says, "Lord to whom will we go?" (verse 68). It's either walk with Jesus, unsafe as it seems sometimes, or go home.
Sarah Arthur
... the kids, they took us places we never would have gone to on our own. Some times were great... some times were wretched... And there was still no guarantee, no bulletproof glass, safety net, steel-toed boots, anything at all that would promise more good moments... so was it enough? It was.
Mary J. Koral
Claire hated to say it, but she knew the answer, in her heart. “Because he feels something for me, and he wanted to give me a chance to live. Like him. With him. But I refused.”Shane turned and looked at her, a blank expression on his face that turned quickly into . . . something else. Claire was glad Myrnin had gotten out while he still could. “Great,” he said. “I knew it.”“It’s not like that. He’s—” She shook her head in frustration. “It’s not like he’s in love with me or anything; it’s more complicated than that. I don’t even think he understands it, exactly.”“Yeah, he only loves you for your mind,” Shane said...
Rachel Caine