Quotes by American Authors - Page 634

I should have told you the minute I saw you that you look beautiful. I do love the way you look tonight.
Robin Bielman
The adventures of a lifetime begin with “Yes.
Gina Greenlee
Lies, greed, pettiness, and ugly emotions ensnare a person. We are free people whom construct our own cages that we allow to suppress our vital instinct to live a wholesome life. Truth telling demands an awareness of what sins cage a person in. Truthfulness also commands that a person fess up to the role that he or she played in scripting unpleasant scenes in a tarnished personal history.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg.
Paul Collins
And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. […] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive “cry”). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals—my old and valued friends—Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten.
Oliver Sacks
Often, the human animal dresses terror in rage, and expresses both in a way unlike either.
Julius Lester
Don't tell me how big my problem is, tell the problem how Big I am
EverSkeptic
The Purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in the partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is why the gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation, and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological 'problematics': how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished.
Alexander Schmemann
We are this world. Its next generation. If you’re not trying to save us, then what exactly are you trying to save?
Claudia Gray
Sometimes we allow pride to keep us running after a man who doesn’t want to be captured.
Lisa Marbly-Warir
I make a living, even life and death judgments, by reading peoples' body language, their raw reactions to situations. And I'd almos swear you've never seen those documents before.""Well," Aidan said, swallowing hard, calculating what fame and money had cost him. "I'd say you're damn good at your job, because I haven't.
Laura Spinella
When problems beat upon you like a raging storm, search for the eye. You might not be able to avoid misfortunes, but you can find the calmest spot within them.
Richelle E. Goodrich
What is needed is the imagination of the poet and the reasoning power of the mathematician. The thief of "The Purloined Letter" successfully hides the letter from the police because he is both a poet and a mathematician. Dupin is able to find it because he too meets both conditions.
Vincent Buranelli
Vinegar: that's what fear smells like.
Jennifer Egan
And now at the airport, after shaking hands with everybody, waving good-bye, I think about all the different ways we leave people in this world. Cheerily waving good-bye to some at airports, knowing we'll never see each other again. Leaving others on the side of the road, hoping that we will. Finding my mother in my father's story and saying good-bye before I have a chance to know her better.
Amy Tan
Education gives you the power to think rationally, think better, and be productive in every act.
Debasish Mridha
In life,You can either play the hand you've been dealt or decide to fold. Just remember that you are not alone in this journey of life. People experience hardships all the time. You learn from those difficult moments and become stronger.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
...it is in the very fundamentals of evil that one always condemns it when they see it but rationalizes it when they do it.
Jack L. Chalker
I have always pictured accupuncture like falling into a box of sewing needles, and then standing up refreshed and free of pain.
Neil Leckman
They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else--the cold, and where he'd go in it--was outside, for a while anyway.
Raymond Carver
Harun AlRashid known for his wealth & diplomatic relations, sent an embassy to France that included an elephant & a water clock
Firas Alkhateeb
There is no one-size-fits-all in communication—everyone’s interpretation of what what you say and how you say it is different.
Terry a O'Neal
Not understanding why affliction occurred has caused many to struggle with their faith. If we knew all the reasons and had the answers to all of our questions we wouldn’t need faith. God wants His children to depend on Him. We are not to work through our struggles with our own strength. Rather, we are to move through our tribulation with the strength God provides.
Cheryl Zelenka
Please, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the linePlease, Mr. Engineer let a man ride the lineI ain't got no ticket please let me ride the blinds
August Wilson
An aged monk led me to the infirmary. "He's got the place to himself. Once the other invalids learned there was a dragon coming they miraculously got well! The lame could walk and the blind decided they didn't really need to see. He's a panacea.
Rachel Hartman
Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.
James A. Michener
You are the last thought in my mind before I drift off to sleep and the first thought when I wake up each morning.
Richard Kronick
This is what grace does. It rescues us from our spiritual blindness. It releases us from our bondage to our rationalism and materialism. Grace gives us the faith to be utterly assured of what we cannot see. It frees us from refusing to believe in anything we cannot experience with our physical senses. But grace does more. It connects us to the invisible One in an eternal love relationship that fills us with joy we have never known before and gives us rest of heart that we would have though impossible. And that grace is still rescuing us, because we still tend to forget what is important, real, and true. We still tend to look to the physical world for our comfort. We still fail to remember in given moments that we really do have a heavenly Father. Grace has done a wonderful thing for us and continues to do more and more.
Paul David Tripp
Each time we make a choice we are either moving toward freedom and prosperity or bondage and misery.
Cameron C. Taylor
One bulb at a time. There was no other way to do it. No shortcuts--simply loving the slow process of planting. Loving the work as it unfolded. Loving an achievement that grew slowly and bloomed for only three weeks each year.
Jaroldeen Asplund Edwards
He doesn’t need a donkey,” says Ana Kuya. “He has a wife.
Leigh Bardugo
Plan all you want, it is a very different thing to actually kill a person than to fantasize about it. In your fantasy, you have superhuman strength. Or your action takes no strength at all. You just do it, your arms gliding effortlessly through the weightlessness of your dream world. In reality, you have to plunge a knife or pull a trigger. You have to look into the eyes of an actual person. You see their humanity. You have to push past the respect for life that has been drilled into you since before you could talk. I’m not saying it’s impossible. It happens every day. But for normal people who have lived their whole lives as law-abiding citizens, trying to be polite and well-mannered, respectful of their elders and kind to animals, good listeners and good employees; for people who use their turn signals, and hurry to get to work on. time, leave tips for their letter carrier, and put dollars in the Salvation Army’s red bucket, hoping to make the world a little better— killing another human being is not an easy thing.
Allison Leotta
Hungry party-goers?! Diabolical!
Simon Dean
We read the pagan sacred books with profit and delight. With myth and fable we are ever charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self.These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, and springs,—the mountains, woods and perfumed dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire; made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and home of love; filled Autumns arms with sun-kissed grapes, and gathered sheaves; and pictured Winter as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his withered face, Cordelia's tears. These myths, though false, are beautiful, and have for many ages and in countless ways, enriched the heart and kindled thought. But if the world were taught that all these things are true and all inspired of God, and that eternal punishment will be the lot of him who dares deny or doubt, the sweetest myth of all the Fable World would lose its beauty, and become a scorned and hateful thing to every brave and thoughtful man.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Hope is the flower of the soul. Let it bloom with action and persistence.
Debasish Mridha
For a great many skeptics are put to waste. But this is meant in the sense that which they vainly focus their energy on ridiculing a certain tiny denomination of Biblical fundamentalism, a denomination seated just one chair away from unbelief; they, the skeptics, cannot believe because they are the most literal of fundamentalists: of those that which must interpret Scripture only by means of a sort of obsolete and dead script of intellectual incompetence. By all means, this is supposed to happen - Scripture states of itself that all thought and interpretation is folly without the Holy Spirit - but on the other hand, it seems, ironically, that if one thinks that the Bible is, in its true essence, an outdated text, he doesn't know much about the world around him nor those who live in it. Either that, or he doesn't know much about what it says in relation to the world around him nor to those who live in it. It's as though he, too, is dead to the world and it to him. He has no spirit: he can only possibly understand Scripture as deceased rather than the modern world's very living narrative.
Criss Jami
Let it be that your life becomes the brightest light that enlightens the whole world.
Debasish Mridha
This democracy thing, or Demoxie, whatever it is, good god. Under the guise of having every voice heard, you create mob rule, a filterless society where secrets are crimes.
Dave Eggers
Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a detail was real or imagined? What mattered was that the detail seemed real, and that it was absolutely the best detail for the circumstance. That wasn't much of a theory, but it was all Ruth could truly commit herself to at the moment. It was time to retire that old lecture, and her penance was to endure the compliments of her former credo.
John Irving
Every day," I said, "every day I go to work and I see my granddad. I see the drunks and the addicts, the people who have fallen right off the edge of the earth. I see people who have made every bad move anyone could make, made every major mistake there was to be made, and by the time I see them, they are paying for it, sometimes with their lives. That's why they came to the ER. "When you work in emergency medicine, you are seeing patients who are the least common denominator as far as human beings go; people who are heartbreakingly stupid and ditty and drunk and high and obnoxious--unbelievably obnoxious. These people have all flowed out of the darkest side of life. And when you are finished with them, that's mostly where they'll return. So each of you who is thinking you want to go into emergency medicine will have to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to do this?'" I tapped my chest. "I know the answer for myself--every day I work I'm taking care of someone who is just like my grandfather, someone just like my mother. But everyone in this room needs to ask himself or herself, 'Do I want to spend the rest of my life with addicts and idiots and drunks and psychotics? Is this what will make me happy?'" I peered at all of them over the top of the microphone. "Very few sane people answer yes.
Pamela Grim
There are no clean victories for black people, nor, perhaps, for any people. The presidency of Barack Obama is no different. One can now say that an African American individual can rise to the same level as a white individual, and yet also say that the number of black individuals who actually qualify for that status will be small. One thinks of Serena Williams, whose dominance and stunning achievements can’t, in and of themselves, ensure equal access to tennis facilities for young black girls. The gate is open and yet so very far away.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Live your life to care and your inner wealth to share.
Debasish Mridha
What counts in making a happy marriage is not so much how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.
George Levinger
And yet all the gold is in England, it is dug up from Portuguese and Spanish mines, but it flows by some occult power of attraction to the Tower of London.” “Flows,” Caroline repeated. “Flows, like a current.” Sophie nodded. “And the English have grown so used to this that they use ‘currency’ as a synonym for money, as if no distinction need be observed between them.
Neal Stephenson
I notice you use 'work' and 'job' interchangeably. oughten to do that. A job's what you force yourself to pay attention to for money. With work, you don't have to force yourself. (Man dining at Claudia Sanders Dinner House)
William Least Heat-Moon
Every person who denies the truth is a coward who doesn't want to admit the truth
Pelle Vecordis
He saw a figure in white robes near the bridge entrance and turned the tape over in his hand. He approached the woman and said, his tone respectful, "Your Highness. The transmission we received...", seemed younger every day, even as her responsibilities grew and grew.He held out his hand. Childlike fingers took the tape."What is it they've sent us?" he asked.Prince Leia Organa looked at him as if he'd placed another burden on her shoulders - another responsibility to add to a count of thousands - and she was proud to bear it."Hope," she said.Raymus believed her.
Alexander Freed
Right thing is usually clear and intuitive enough to feel in our gut.
Ryan Holiday
Say 'Not Yet.' It's best to leave your options open.
Michele Jaffe
African American women actively contested white constructions of black female labor.
LeShawn Harris
Please stop sniffing the robot boy, Noemi tells herself, jerking out of the trance.
Claudia Gray
Avalon is full of desperate people.’ She bites at her lower lip this time, fumbling her hands, knitting her fingers into the bundle of plastic coin bags in her grasp. ‘Are you implying that I’m desperate?’ I say, one eyebrow tilting.‘You don’t need to be desperate… you can have anyone... I…’ she trails off. Looking up and trying to search the line of shops for the bank. I repulse her, I make her want to run. Why is this so hard? I need to get inside of her, I need to know what she is thinking, what she is wanting.It surely isn’t me she wants. Not to the extent that I… want her.‘You?’ I entice her to finish her sentence but she doesn’t, she stares off into the bustling crowds, memory flashing her eyes with a darkness.‘Madi wouldn’t fumble like this.’Oh, she would fumble, but not in the way you are, Elli.‘You’re not her, Elli.’ I entice her again, trying to force the dark memory, the sadness from her.‘No, if I was, you wouldn’t have wanted anyone else.’A breath hitches in her throat, she puts a hand over her mouth and says something else, her cheeks dance a shade of red that brightens and brightens until she apologises and quickens her pace. I chuckle, pulling at her arm and encircling one around her waist, pulling her back to me. Beneath my touch, her body trembles. When I raise my hand, my palm touching her cheek, I am sure she isn’t breathing.‘I don’t want anyone, Elli.’ My eyes burn, consuming her with my gaze. She is like a frightful deer, struggling beneath me with a gaze that cannot quite meet mine. When she does, it is only for a brief second before falling down and all I see is the gentle flutter of her raven flashes.‘I told you. I want someone I cannot have.’‘That is a really harsh way of telling someone you’re not interested.
Charlotte Munro
I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that I believed in, and the only thing that believed in me.
Roman Payne
Let the light of love enlighten the whole world. Let the power of love overpower all the evils.
Debasish Mridha
Two things I can't stand - sitting and sleeping.
J.R. Rim
I don't know what I was expecting a vampire's room to look like. Maybe lots of black, a bunch of books by Camus... oh, and a sensitive portrait of the only human the vamp ever loved, who had no doubt died of something beautiful and tragic, thus dooming the vamp to an eternity of moping and sighing dramatically.What can I say? I read a lot of books.
Rachel Hawkins
Figure out how to balance Oliver with a career you’ve wanted your whole life,” he tells me. “Because you’ll end up with neither if you think you have to choose.
Christina Lauren
Once more September marveled that even the Dodo knew what she wanted to be when she was grown. She simply could not think what she herself might do. September expected that destinies, which is how she thought of professions, simply landed upon one like a crown, and ever after no one questioned or fretted over it, being sure of one’s own use in the world. It was only that somehow her crown had not yet appeared. She did hope it would hurry up.
Catherynne M. Valente
Loving her forever couldn’t be wrong. Not when seeing her made his breath catch or his heart stop. Not when hope demanded they make it one more day together. No one compared to her, and he couldn’t bear to lose her again.
Nichole Severn
It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together before some of us even get our feet set in the right way
Louisa May Alcott