Quotes by American Authors - Page 617

I am a Muslim, because it's a religion that teaches you an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It teaches you to respect everybody, and treat everybody right. But it also teaches you if someone steps on your toe, chop off their foot. And I carry my religious axe with me all the time.
Malcolm X
Yours are the only shoes made to walk your journey.
Charles F. Glassman
Their beauty had always seemed to him like the beauty of pressed flowers - lovely, but dead.
Cassandra Clare
There is nothing inhuman, evil, or irrational which does not give some comfort, provided it is shared by a group.
Erich Fromm
Every 'no' is a 'yes' to something.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Shining like a work of artHanging on a wall of starsAre you what I think you are?You're my satelliteYou're riding with me tonightPassenger side, lighting the skyAlways the first star that I findYou're my satelliteElevator to the moonWhistling our favorite tuneTrying to get a closer viewYou're my satelliteYou're riding with me tonightPassenger side, lighting the skyAlways the first star that I findYou're my satelliteMaybe you will always beJust a little out of reach
Guster
Be selfish and take good care of you first. When you are your best, you can best help others.
Bryant McGill
I threw my hands on my hips, shocked by the irony. A Mather helping a Greensmith? Hell was freezing over somewhere beneath our feet and every kind of farm animal was sprouting wings to fly.
Leigh Goff
In fact, I don’t understand religion at all and as far as I can see the only thing it does is hasten the slaughter of people who generally seem to be minding their own business.
Beth McMullen
I’m a Black woman. Empowered, powerful, and greatness.
Stephanie Lahart
The photograph, then, becomes a representation of a representation of a disease that represents. In other words, in order to produce the most perfect images of hysteria, the hysteric – a woman whose illness simulates the symptoms of other diseases – was transformed, through hypnosis, into an artificial hysteric who perfectly simulated the simulations of hysteria. The medical photograph becomes a copy of a copy of a copy, a representation so far removed from the original that all duplicitous traits, were easily erased, leaving the deranged and chaotic nature of the original far behind. The photograph succeeded in turning the hysteric into a wholly artificial being, literally a flat, framed, unmoving image.
Asti Hustvedt
There are easy ways to bring back summer in the snowstorm
André Aciman
Colour which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
Henry David Thoreau
Sometimes sanity just means the ability to recognize the end of the road when you reach it.
Robert Dunbar
You replace every molecule of every cell in your body within the course of only one year. I am not being flip when I refer to the "new you." It is quite literally possible, no matter how bad you are feeling or eating today, to be utterly transformed in just 365 days. But it won't take you that long. You can be feeling significantly better in just a couple of days and make lasting changes to your health within a month.
Woodson Merrell
Sometimes not getting what you want is God's greatest blessing.
Steve Maraboli
Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?
Jerome Charyn
Magical since Birth.
Stephanie Lahart
HARV appeared in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. “You really should read your e-mails from Randy more carefully,” he lectured.“I skim them,” I protested.“Well, if you skimmed them more carefully you would know that prolonged exposure to stealth mode may lead to side effects.”“I can handle . . .”“Impotence.” HARV smiled.“Oh,” I said.“Randy hasn’t really tested it on humans. It’s extra tough to get volunteers for those types of experiments,” HARV said. “Though he has computer simulated it and the results tend to support this conclusion.”“Let’s try to limit our use of stealth mode from now on,” I said.
John Zakour
Elvis!" Min shoved herself off the couch to shoo him away. "Stay away from there. There's broken glass.""He did that on purpose," David said, outraged."Yes, David, the cat is plotting against you." Min fished the base out of the water and glass shards and put it on the table. Then she went to get her wastebasket and began to put the glass pieces in it.
Jennifer Crusie
What’s her name? Claire, what’s her name?
Rachel Caine
When someone cries so hard that it hurts their throat, it is out of frustration or knowing that no matter what you can do or attempt to do can change the situation. When you feel like you need to cry, when you want to just get it out, relieve some of the pressure from the inside - that is true pain. Because no matter how hard you try or how bad you want to, you can't. That pain just stays in place. Then, if you are lucky, one small tear may escape from those eyes that water constantly. That one tear, that tiny, salty, droplet of moisture is a means of escape. Although it's just a small tear, it is the heaviest thing in the world. And it doesn't do a damn thing to fix anything.
Chase Brooks
Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.
Alice Hoffman
Edmund doesn’t solve any of his grievances or personality disorders by going through the wardrobe. If anything, they're exacerbated and brought to a crisis by his experiences in Narnia. When you go to Narnia, your worries come with you. Narnia just becomes the place where you work them out and try to resolve them.
Levi Grossman
AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.
Chris Prentiss
tiny: but there is the word, this word phil wrayson taught me once: weltschmerz. it's the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you.
David Levithan
As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations.
Bill Watterson
During the interim, no matter how much agony the man may feel, he also experiences excitement, the excitement of learning how to cope with a closed society that reflects free society as a funhouse mirror reflects the human form: everything is there, but distorted.
Edward Bunker
I’m good at being vague and unpredictable. It’s sort of a hard habit to break.
Elle Lothlorien
McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for.Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
Hunter S. Thompson
Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and question them closely. "Ask them about their tutors, manner of teaching. Observe what books lie on their tables. Fall into questions of literature, science, or what you will.
David McCullough
Delusion is not just fantasy but compulsion.
Sylvia Nasar
The world you are in –Is the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.
Suzy Kassem
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
John Green
To ease the pain, erase the anger.
Anthony Liccione
Those who choose to walk on love's path are well served if they have a guide. That guide can enable us to overcome fear if we trust that they will not lead us astray or abandon us along the way.
Bell Hooks
His attention means nothing if you don't have his respect.
Stephan Labossiere
Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people.
William Faulkner
If you expect perfection from other people your whole life is a series of disappointments grumbling and complaints. If on the contrary you pitch your expectations low taking folks as the inefficient creatures which they are you are frequently surprised by having them perform better than you had hoped.
Bruce Barton
Shit rolls downhill. Bureaucracy rolls faster.
David Wellington
The Dimwit's Guide to the Female Mind might assist your efforts in understanding human females. But it must be pointed out that this subject can be a dangerous adventure and should be undertaken with extreme caution. After all, human males have been trying to understand their females for generations, and most of the time they come away from these encounters looking like someone stuck their tails into an electric socket.
Anne Bishop
The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page.
Charles Bukowski
Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of authority—that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes and fears in common.
Robert G. Ingersoll
If art's a seismographic project, when that project meets with failure, failure must become the subject too.
Chris Kraus
Why would you ever premedicate honesty? To hesitate is to overthink how you feel. A blurted out answer is usually the most genuine.
Shannon L. Alder
I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.
David Levithan
I am not Iron-Man, I am Forest-Man!
Steven Magee
I don't think anybody ever really knows what's going to happen," he said. "We're all just out here hoping for the best.
Sarah Dessen
I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.
Stephen Dunn
Remember, pain and misery are transient and ephemeral but love has the healing power,which is eternal.
Debasish Mridha
Dogma in power does have a unique chilling ingredient not exhibited by power, however ghastly, wielded for its own traditional sake.
Christopher Hitchens
A pumpkin lives but once a year when someone sets its soul afire and on that night it stirs up fear until its flame is snuffed.But e'en one night of eerie light is fright enough.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Also surprising to scientists have been the recently documented virgin births in captivity of several types of sharks—the hammerhead, the bonnethead (also known as the shovelhead), and the blacktip.
Karen Shanor
One morning she happened upon a bit of cloth decorated with pictures of little red squirrels carrying small, brown,nutsacks,and she nearly fainted away.
Cynthia Rylant
I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion. Dislike, displeasure, resentment, fault-finding, imagination, passionate remonstrance, a sense of injustice--they all make fine fuel.
Edna Ferber
We all see only that which we are trained to see.
Robert Anton Wilson
And so we keep on thinking, because the next thought might be the answer.
Jonah Lehrer
...I used to think if you read enough books you'd automatically know how to do everything the right way. But reading and doing are not the same at all.
Judy Blume
Some day each of us will be famous for fifteen minutes.
Andy Warhol
He wondered if normalcy was something, like vision or silence, you didn't realize was precious until you lost it.
Cassandra Clare