Quotes by American Authors - Page 676

Musical Chairs. Except I thought, when God's providing the music, everyone gets a chair.
Neta Jackson
How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.
Kristin Cashore
You of all people know how hard it is to trust. Especially when the world we live in is not the one humans are aware of. Trust must be earned, and the way to earn it is to prove you deserve it.
Elizabeth Morgan
The world has been taught to be scared of him, but the reality is that he is scared of the world because he has none of the tools necessary to cope with it.
Trevor Noah
A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men-and people in general.
Lorraine Hansbury
The resulting amalgam - an exotic mixture of European, Caribbean, African, and American elements - made Louisiana into perhaps the most seething ethnic melting pot that the nineteenth century world could produce. This cultural gumbo would serve as breeding ground for many of the great hybrid musics of modern times; not just jazz, but also cajun, zydeco, blues, and other new styles flourished as a result of this laissez-faire environment. In this warm, moist atmosphere, sharp delineations between cultures gradually softened and ultimately disappeared.
Ted Gioia
Man's mind is not a container to be filled but rather a fire to be kindled.
Dorothea Brande
There are endless ways to thank the people who have contributed to your life. Dole out thanks, and your life will bloom.
Amy Leigh Mercree
A relationship, of any kind, requires two. Some people want it all and expect it all, always looking outward, so often saying what they deserve, even more saying what they want, and all thinking another should provide it for them, but do they ever bother to be the person they think someone else would love to have? Perhaps, in order to get that better love, extend it first.
Donna Lynn Hope
Again with that slow, lordly smile. Perfectly shaped for Luc's fist.
Page Morgan
Have you thrown ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ at her yet?
Elle Lothlorien
Art serves a purpose. It expands our horizons, frees our minds, and opens us up to new experiences. It opens the imagination. All these great discoveries of our time — without the desire to reach beyond our boundaries, we would be forever stagnant. The folly is in closing one’s eyes and not recognizing it.
Carol Oates
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
Noam Chomsky
That's the existential problem," Fat said, "based on the concept that We are what we do, rather than, We are what we think. It finds its first expression in Goethe's Faust, Part One, where Faust says, 'Im Anfang war das Wort'. He's quoting the opening of the Fourth Gospel; 'In the beginning was the Word.' Faust says, 'Nein. Im Anfang war die Tat.' In the beginning was the Deed. From this, all existentialism comes.
Philip K Dick
She sighed. Men were a pain.
Larry McMurtry
Artists, especially writers, great writers, are the most honest people I know. There are deep confessions in their words. And if we're strong enough to expose the spaces between them, we find truths there also.
Darnell Lamont Walker
By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.
Judith Lewis Herman
A purposeful life is a happy life.
Debasish Mridha
Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
This world is unreal and ever-changing. Only an optimist with optimum love can adjust and grow with joy.
Debasish Mridha
One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.
Al David
most of us, as we undergo the growing up process, do not get what we want or even what we should. We get what we have, and no more, and we find out how to make what we have work for us.
Lilith Saintcrow
Think less of yourself and more of others…and others will think more of you. ~Jason Versey
Jason Versey
Be good to yourself. If you don't take care of your body, where will you live?
Kobi Yamada
The camera's greedy lens sucks my image through it and splashes my pixilated ghost across his face in pale blue light.
Tyler Knight
Self-observation helps us to refocus within, to balance ourselves and to be in the present moment....
Jacqueline Ripstein
A new concept of god: “something not very different from the sum total of the physical laws of the universe; that is, gravitation plus quantum mechanics plus grand unified field theories plus a few other things equaled god. And by that all they meant was that here were a set of exquisitely powerful physical principles that seemed to explain a great deal that was otherwise inexplicable about the universe. Laws of nature…that apply not just locally, not just in Glasgow, but far beyond: Edinburgh, Moscow…Mars…the center of the Milky Way, and out by the most distant quarters known. That the same laws of physics apply everywhere is quite remarkable. Certainly that represents a power greater than any of us.
Carl Sagan
The tear-stained letters of my regret will remain forever unread, for I am never going to be strong enough to give them to you.
Courtney M. Privett
there was nothing to be ashamed of in doing jobs simply to make a living, so long as those jobs fueled other creative efforts
Alec Baldwin
Sex is not a wizard, whatever magical-seeming properties it might possess in its better forms. If your friend says to you, "You're being mean, you need to get laid," your problem is not sex. Your problems are that you might be acting like an asshole, and your friends are definitely idiots.
Katie Heaney
But into the first decades of the twentieth century, even at the New York Times, it was uncommon for journalists to see a sharp divide between facts and values. Yet the belief in objectivity is just this: the belief that one can and should separate facts from values. Facts, in this view, are assertions about the world open to independent validation. They stand beyond the distorting influences of any individual's personal preferences. Values, in this view, are an individual's conscious or unconscious preferences for what the world should be; they are seen as ultimately subjective and so without legitimate claim on other people. The belief in objectivity is a faith in "facts," a distrust of "values," and a commitment to their segregation.
Michael Schudson
To find a focus, learn to love and dream.
Debasish Mridha
Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's.
Woody Allen
I cried until my eyes swelled shut, and then I slept, a black, dreamless sleep from which I awoke amazingly refreshed, at least until I remembered.
Elizabeth Berg
Fredrika Bimm, what do you think you're doing?""Freaking out. Losing my mind. Thinking about snapping your husband's spine. Squashing the urge to vomit. Wishing I had died at childbirth.""Oh, you say that when you don't get a prize in your Lucky Charms.
MaryJanice Davidson
In my generation, there was a single girl given the strength and skill to fight the spread of darkness...but in your generation, there are nearly two thousand with the powers of the slayer, and not all of them have chosen to use their newfound abilities conscientiously.
Joss Whedon
Don’t tell Mom, but I think my little emergency last night was a sign. And I was thinking of you when it happened. So, I’m worried that this is a prediction about you. Do you have something big planned? Something dangerous that you’re going to do?”tMike looked away. He didn’t want to lie to her but he also couldn’t tell her his plan. t“Well, whatever it is, don’t do it, okay? You’re going to get the feeling soon too. I know it,” she yawned, “It feels like it’s a long way off, but I’ve never had this strong a reaction before. And now that I’m stuck in bed, I can’t help you…or stop you. So please, whatever you’re doing, let it go, okay? Especially if it’s about the shop. Just let me handle it.”t“I’ll be careful,” he said. t“Huh?” she yawned again. tHe didn’t answer. Her eyelids grew heavy until they closed all the way. Mike lifted the sheet that was turned down from the bed and draped it over her. Then, he left the room, closing the door behind him. - Saving Hascal's Horrors
Laura Smith
As for me, I was just trying to get it right, whatever that means. But now I finally felt I was on my way. Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back - leaving meastounded, amazed and most of all, alive.
Sarah Dessen
When a poet settled down to write a poem, could he foresee the lines he would write? Did his head constantly spin with riddles and rhymes and was his only job to put them down? What if he couldn’t get them to make sense, and no one, not even the person he cared for most, could have pleasure in reading it? What would he do?
Alysha Speer
What chilling blows we suffer-thanks to our conflicting wills-whenever we show these mortal men some kindness.
Steve Berry
Wise is the one who flavors the future with some salt from the past. Becoming dust is no threat to the phoenix born from the ash.
Curtis Tyrone Jones
Art is why I get up in the morning, but my definition ends there. You know, it doesn't seem fair that I'm living for something I can't even define, but there you are, right there, in the meantime.
Ani DiFranco
One on God's side is a majority.
Wendell Phillips
Dating is like trying to make a meal out of leftovers. Some leftovers actually get better when they've had a little time to mature. But others should be thrown out right away, No matter how you try to warm them up, they're never as good as when they were new.
Lisa Kleypas
Carol, a swing-shift cocktail waitress in the Bird of Paradise's show lounge had gotten home (guesswork, here) around 2:15 - 2:30, poured herself a glass of milk, and had opened the back door of the kitchen for reasons unknown. (Fingerprints were later found on the outside knob that, while smudged, didn't belong to either girl.)She had opened the door, and died. Suddenly, quietly, without disturbing her sleeping roommate only a few feet away.
Jeff Rice
Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.
Laurie Halse Anderson
If you were in paris your food might as well glitter.
Michelle Gable
Create a vision for the life you really want and then work relentlessly towards making it a reality.
Roy T. Bennett
Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention...
Wallace Stegner
I'm done doing this!' Obama said, finally erupting. 'We've all agreed on a plan. And we're all going to stick to that plan. I haven't agreed to anything beyond that.'The 30,000 was a 'hard cap,' he said forcefully. 'I don't want enablers to be used as wiggle room. The easy thing for me to do - politically - would actually be to say no' to the 30,000. Then he gestured out the Oval Office windows, across the Potomac, in the direction of the Pentagon. Referring to Gates and the uniformed military, he said. 'They think it's the opposite. I'd be perfectly happy -' He stopped mid-sentence. 'Nothing would make Rahm happier than if I said no to the 30,000.'There was some subdued laughter.'Rahm would tell me it'd be much easier to do what I want to do by saying no,' the president said. He could then focus on the domestic agenda that he wanted to be the heart of his presidency. The military did not understand. 'Politically, what these guys don't get is it'd be a lot easier for me to go out and give a speech saying, 'You know what? The American people are sick of this war, and we're going to get out of there.
Bob Woodward
Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.
Henry David Thoreau
Bigotry is based on deception, of oneself and of others.
DaShanne Stokes
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
Abigail Van Buren
Most of the tools from medieval times were extensions of the physical self. Tools are now extensions of the mental self.
Lotoya Peterson
Are there any two words in all of the English language more closely twinned than courage and cowardice? I do not think there is a man alive who will not yearn to possess the former and dread to be accused of the latter. One is held to be the apogee of man's character, the other its nadir. An yet, to me the two sit side by side on the circle of life, removed from each other by the merest degree of arc. (MARCH - Chapter 11 - page 168)
Geraldine Brooks
We are all living history, and it’s hard to say now what will be important in the future. One thing’s certain, though: if we throw it away, it’s gone.
Marilyn Johnson
O, never from the memory of my heartYour dear, paternal image shall depart,Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,Taught me how mortals are immortalized;How grateful am I for that patient careAll my life long my language shall declare.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Life isn't a book. There's no guarantee of a happy ending.
Kristin Cast
People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both
Benjamin Franklin
Boy! There are times when I get the feeling that science develops things that are supposed to be good for us, but that just make trouble.”Dr. Tresselt’s blue eyes seemed to throw out sparks of amusement. “I know how you feel, Joe,” he said. “But my stars, boy, nobody can be alive and never have any trouble! Being alive is just meeting troubles every day and overcoming them. Just to stand up straight against the pull of gravity is a fight, isn’t it?
Jay Williams