Quotes by American Authors - Page 61

I start trying to stay unconscious. The problem with this is that no amount of willpower can change the reality.
Lauren DeStefano
I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength.
Kahlil Gibran
I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm.
Brian Doyle
Do the children who prefer books set in the real, ordinary, workaday world ever read as obsessively as those who would much rather be transported into other worlds entirely?
Laura Miller
You cannot make yourself have a flashback, nor will you have one unless you are emotionally ready to remember something. Once remembered, the memory can help you to face more of the truth. You can then express your pent-up feelings about the memory and continue on your path to recovery. Think of the flashback as a clue to the next piece of work. No matter how painful, try to view it as a positive indication that you are now ready and willing to remember.
Beverly Engel
Starting over is an acceptance of a past we can’t change, an unrelenting conviction that the future can be different, and the stubborn wisdom to use the past to make the future what the past was not.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Aim towards enemy." - instructions on U.S. rocket launcher
U.S. instruction manual
Pain too much to handle also comes with exquisite beauty, as common as dirt, as unexpected as grace.
Shannon Huffman Polson
Every moment is precious, even the ones behind me that I often reflect upon with a reserved smile. However…I seldom look back, only forward in anticipation of the next greater now.
Carl Henegan
Now”—she leaned in a bit—“would you like to go flying with Grandmum before we take you home, so you can watch her toss cows around for no other reason than her own amusement?”“Sounds unnecessarily cruel.”“Exactly!” Rhiannon used her tail to place her granddaughter on her back. “See? Already you’re learning what it means to be part of this family.
G.A. Aiken
The two kinds of people on earth that I mean Are the people who lift and the people who lean.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
You can’t just come out and say what you have to say. That’s what people do on airplanes, when a man plops down next to you in the aisle seat of your flight to New York, spills peanuts all over the place (back when the cheapskate airlines at least gave you peanuts), and tells you about what his boss did to him the day before. You know how your eyes glaze over when you hear a story like that? That’s because of the way he’s telling his story. You need a good way to tell your story.
Adair Lara
Colored lights blink on and off, racing across the green boughs. Their reflections dance across exquisite glass globes and splinter into shards against tinsel thread and garlands of metallic filaments that disappear underneath the other ornaments and finery.Shadows follow, joyful, laughing sprites.The tree is rich with potential w
Vera Nazarian
Art is not in some far-off place.
Lydia Davis
Teddy White lamented that TV might spell the death of serious politics: to give a thoughtful response to serious questions, politician needed a good thirty seconds to ponder, but television allowed only five seconds of silence at best. DDB (ad men) found nothing to lament and the fact. They were convinced you could learn everything you needed to KNOW about a product, which in this case happens to be a human being, in half a minute – the speed not of thought but of emotion.
Rick Perlstein
... I didn't know whether to feel angry at her for making me part of her suicide or just to feel angry at myself for letting her go.
John Green
Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.
Philip José Farmer
I understand,” she says, and then she quotes Du Fu: “The country is broken, but the mountains and rivers remain.” Her eyes flash; he catches sight of the fire in this modest woman. “We are the mountains and rivers,” he says, impressed. “No matter what the country is called.
Shawna Yang Ryan
Gingerbread I knew I had to get out of therebefore the icing cracked and they discoveredthat I'm burnt around the edges,doughy in the center,that what they thought was sugaris salt.If I was a good girl,if I could satisfy their cravings, if every dream in my misshapen headdidn't bite, I might have stayed at the table.Wouldn't you run, too,from such voracious love?
Christine Heppermann
It is rare for people to be asked the question which puts them squarely in front of themselves
Arthur Miller
One of us," said Malcolm, "is worth five hundred of you. I can burn you to the ground in six seconds flat and use the ashes to stuff a teddy bear for my girlfriend. Not that I have a girlfriend at the moment," he added, "but one lives to hope.
Cassandra Clare
As Joab now reflected, however, much time had passed since David lived in that natural God-state and treated his devoted people with that kind of tender loving care. Nowadays, with his ego having taken over his life, David was a different machine. He had become callused, manipulative, and greedy. It was all about money, power, and control. He was now easily threatened, even by what seemed like small insignificant things. Disagreement with him in any form was dangerous. It didn’t take much to set him off, and when it did, anything might happen.
Marco Raye
What’s the difference?” I asked him. “Between the love of your life, and your soulmate?”“One is a choice, and one is not.” “There is a string that connects us that is not visible to the eye,” he said. “Maybe every person has more than one soul they are connected to, and all over the world there are these invisible strings.” As if to make his point, his finger traced a black ribbon that ran through my horse’s mane. “Maybe the chances that you’ll find each and every one of your soulmates is slim. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to stumble across one. And you feel a tug. And it’s not so much a choice to love them through their flaws and through your differences, but rather you love them without even trying. You love their flaws.
Tarryn Fisher
If a policy is wrongheaded feckless and corrupt I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.
David H. Hackworth
I wish you believe, not for myprofit, but for yours. I daily pray the true God give you light, that you may believe. Whether you will ever believe in tis world I do not know, but when you die I know you will believe what I now say. You will then appear before God you now deny. - Adorinam Judson to his Burman teacher.
Courtney Anderson
Feedback doesn’t tell you about yourself. It tells you about the person giving the feedback. In other words, if someone says your work is gorgeous, that just tells you about *their* taste. If you put out a new product and it doesn’t sell at all, that tells you something about what your audience does and doesn’t want. When we look at praise and criticism as information about the people giving it, we tend to get really curious about the feedback, rather than dejected or defensive.
Tara Mohr
Have you ever taken a good look at a public garbage can in Paris, a paving stone in Rio de Janeiro, or a doorway in Dublin? Trust me -- the man or woman responsible for making those utilitarian objects was creating art.
Shawn Coyne
[A] couple I had known - who were old friends - asked me what I was going to work on next. I told them I wanted to write a near future book about AIDS concentration camps. They were vehement in their response: they thought it was a terrible idea. Their words both shocked and saddened me. "Do you really want to write a book about homosexuals?" they asked me. "Won't people who read your work be influenced toward sin?"I notice that I don't hear from them much lately.
Tracy Hickman
I remember how the book talked about the pressure to please and be perfect that every woman falls into and then projects onto her daughter. Nothing is ever good enough. No woman can ever outrun what she has to do. No one can be all things - a mother, a good partner, a lover, as well as a competitor in the workplace.
Kim Gordon
My future starts when I wake up every morning. Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
Miles Davis
I need you to be happy. I need one of us to be happy.
Holly Black
I’m well aware that this—that I—am the first man to ever do this to her. And yes, as a guy, thatfact makes it even better.You know who Neil Armstrong is, don’t you?Now tell me who the second guy was. Hell, tell me any other guy you know who made it to themoon after him. You can’t, can you? That’s why this is such a rush.She’ll never forget this.She’ll always remember…me.Maybe that’s chauvinistic and egotistical, but it’s the truth.-Drew Evans
Emma Chase
And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinner at a distance
Brennan Manning
Seventy-six for an American male was a number on an actuarial chart that includes men who are obese, smokers and inheritors of deadly family genes.
Tom Brokaw
This is your first marathon. Possibly, you’ll want it to be your last. Focus on future races draws energy from the one in front of you. Like the mileage that comprises them, train for marathons one at a time.
Gina Greenlee
True love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.
William Goldman
a storm that walked on legs of lightning,dragging its shaggy belly over the fields.
Ted Kooser
For one entire day I let his kiss burn on my cheek and into my blood and I don't push the memory away... This kiss, these words, they feel like beginning.
Ally Condie
There are treasures in books that all the money in the world cannot buy, but the poorest laborer can have for nothing.
Robert G. Ingersoll
2) Members will attend events together as a group, including, but not limited to, Homecoming, Prom, parties, and other couply events, despite possibly being labeled as freaks and getting jealous looks from guys who wish we were their hot dates, but instead have to settle for some lame wannabe.
Elizabeth Eulberg
I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. ...We tell the story to get them back, to capture the traces of footfalls through the snow.
Gail Caldwell
Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.
Tom Robbins
You will soon learn that there ARE no strange stars, no alien skies"- No?"Only skies and stars, in all their varieties. Each one with its own flavour, and all flavours good"- Now YOU think like a tree. Flavours! Of skies!"I have tasted the heat of many stars, and all of them were sweet
Orson Scott Card
When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.
Sara Zarr
He tunneled his dirty hands through her hair and kissed her breathless. Her neck, her eyes, the corners of her mouth. He kissed her lips as if his life depended on it. Kissed their future into her. All they could have and all they could be.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
It always amuses me how much time people have to sit there and focus their energy on slagging you off. If they spent a fraction of that time on passion on working on their own business... they might actually get somewhere in life!
Lisa Newton
A learned man came to me once.He said, "I know the way, -- come."And I was overjoyed at this.Together we hastened.Soon, too soon, were weWhere my eyes were useless,And I knew not the ways of my feet.I clung to the hand of my friend;But at last he cried, "I am lost.
Stephen Crane
Most people would have probably lost count around seven. This was, Harry knewfrom his extensive reading on logic and arithmetic, the largest number that most peoplecould visually appreciate. Put seven dots on a page, and most people can take a quickglance and declare, “Seven.” Switch to eight, and the majority of humanity was lost.
Julia Quinn
The word phobic has its place when properly used, but lately it's been declawed by the pompous insistence that most animosity is based upon fear rather than loathing.... I hate computers. My hatred is entrenched, and I nourish it daily. I'm comfortable with it, and no community outreach program will change my mind.
David Sedaris
The secret must stay and- according to scientists- the love will live. The heart is quite comfortable with secrets. After all, its home is a dark wet place tucked in among all the other organs who aren't talking either.
Toby Barlow
The last book I picked up had a picture of the Stranger on the front cover. Although his eyes were not nearly as beautiful in my dream state, they still took my breath away. I opened it up curiously and there was one word written in a large, bolded font: FATE.
Markelle Grabo
Trust is not an obsession, it's an extension of love. When we truly love someone, we give them our heart to hold in their hands. And when that love is returned, that very trust is balm to our souls.
Julie Lessman
Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been.
Alan Alda
She was tall and dark-skinned and looked like a Nigerian sculpture. She moved like a lioness, her every step bristling with suppressed violence.
Bonnie Greer
I was determined to get them away from the idea that their education is a private experience.
Joan Countryman
Frank stared at him. "Unfair? You can breathe underwater and blow up glaciers and summon freaking hurricanes-and it's unfair that I can be an elephant?"Percy considered. "Okay. I guess you got a point. But the next time I say you're totally beast-""Just shut up," Frank said. "Please."Percy cracked a smile.
Rick Riordan
For the first time I realize how perilous peace can be. I appreciate the tightrope that my grandfather has spent his whole life trying to walk. And now, more than ever, I grow terrified that I'm going to make us all fall down.
Ally Carter
He was especially excited about Aguirre, the Wrath of God. "Look at this crazy dude," he yelled, point at Klaus Kinski, who on the cover is wearing a Viking helmet and looks like a psychopath. So--with Dad's permission--we put the film in and watched it. This would turn out to be the single most important thing ever to happen in our lives.
Jesse Andrews
Examples of fractals are everywhere in nature. They can be found in the patterns of trees, branches, and ferns, in which each part appears to be a smaller image of the whole. They are found in the branch-like patterns of river systems, lightning, and blood vessels. They can be seen in snowflakes, seashells, crystals, and mountain ranges. We can even see the holographic and fractal-like nature of reality in the structure of the Universe itself, as the clusters of galaxies and dark matter resemble the neurons in our brain, the mycelium network of fungi, as well as the network of the man-made Internet.
Joseph P. Kauffman
To be successful, you need friends. To be very successful, you need enemies.
Ari Gold