Quotes by American Authors - Page 680

Do not allow past mistakes to shape your future.
Lorna Jackie Wilson
I use your love as a man burns a candle, burns it away, to light his steps.
Ursula K Le Guin
Here's the thing- I love you and I love her, but I swear to God I'll kick your ass if you hurt her.
Katie McGarry
I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within.
Hope Barrett
We can't take any credit for our talents. It's how we use them that counts.
Madeleine L'Engle
I am unable to believe in a God susceptible to prayer. I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits, and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.
Quentin Crisp
I want you to walk away from a fight instead of run toward it, goddamn it.
Kaylie Newell
But the book! The siren song of the book!
Ellen Douglas
No problem. Just drop it back off before you go," he says, procuring a brass key. "And if he puts on Bowie's early stuff and starts sweet-talking, dammit, you run. You run as fast as you can.
Hannah Harrington
What at one time one refuses to see never vanishes but returns, again and again, in many forms.
Susan Griffin
A guy should make the woman he is dating feel different and more special than anyone else in his life
Samantha Daniels
If you want to leave a legacy...leave it now, every day of your life, not just after you are gone or only as a result of a narrowly defined way of contributing. With every thought, word, and deed you leave something behind. You get to choose whether you leave a legacy of impossibility or possibility, of denigration, or celebration, of unkindness, or kindness, of judgment, or acceptance, of struggles or grace, of discouragement or encouragement, of frailty or strength, of tears of laughter, of fear or love. What is n your heart to leave as a legacy, in this moment...and now this one?
Cathy Drew. Poet
Are you one of those people who uses words more for the sound than for the sense of them?
Dean Koontz
What constitutes an American? Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice property, ease and security in order that he and his children may retain the rights of free men. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.
Harold Ickes
Wherever there is a human being I see God-given rights inherent in that being whatever may be the sex or complexion.
William Lloyd Garrison
Too often fantasy is not a rich elaboration of life designed to enhance our existence, rather it is our pell-mell escape from life with the intent of exiting this existence. And the most imaginative fantasy of all is to somehow think that I can do that in the first place.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It doesn't matter if the group is a church or a gang or a sewing circle or masculinity itself, asking members to dislike, disown, or distance themselves from another group of people as a condition of 'belonging' is always about control and power. I think we have to question the intentions of any group that insists on disdain toward other people as a membership requirement. It may be disguised as belonging, but real belonging doesn't necessitate disdain.
Brené Brown
The question that surrounds lovemaking is, "Did you cum?" and the unasked question beneath that is, "Am I all right?
Sam Keen
From the safety of his BMW with tinted windows, he watched Hannah Young pull out of her parking space, seemingly in a hurry to leave work. He'd hoped to catch her alone, but the garage was too busy right now. He wasn't out of place at all, but he couldn't have made a move against her without someone noticing. And following her from the hospital wasn't an option. Traffic in Miami was too thick this time of day.tSomething told him she'd notice if he tailed her. Hannah was far too smart for her own good. She'd seen something she shouldn't have, and unfortunately he needed to eliminate her.tIt wasn't something he relished doing, but it came down to his life or hers.
Katie Reus
How many nights are we here?" Cassie asked. "Six? So we need what, 20 bottles?
Gennifer Albin
We are creature of darkness and light, capable of barbarism and limitless cruelty, and also love, and laughter and the creation of the most sublime beauty. We are both these things, clearly, but which are we more of?
Mark Frost
Sometimes your belief system is really your fears attached to rules.
Shannon L. Alder
I have been in sorrow's kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows with a harp and sword in my hands.
Zora Neale Hurston
Every heart is a universe within its own galaxy that is ready to accommodate many others in her immeasurable depth.
Debasish Mridha
This figure upon the Cross is not a MVD agent or a Gestapo inquisitor, but a Divine Physician, Who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them. If our sins be as scarlet, they shall be washed white as snow, and if they be as red as crimson, they shall be made white as wool. Was it not He Who told us, “I say to you, that even so there shall be more joy in Heaven upon one sinner that doth penance than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance” (Luke 15:7)? In the story of the prodigal, did He not describe the Father as saying, “Let us eat and make merry: because this my son was dead and is come to life again; was lost and is found” (Luke 15:23, 24)? Why is there more joy in Heaven for the repentant sinner than for the righteous? Because God’s attitude is not judgment but love. In judgment, one is not as joyful after doing wrong as before; but in love, there is joy because the danger and worry of losing that soul is past. He who is sick is loved more than he who is well, because he needs it more. Some will feign sickness to solicit love and pretend wounds that the beloved may bind them.
Fulton J. Sheen
I long for the day when people embrace our common humanity and respect diversity.
Liza M. Wiemer
In all these assaults on the senses there is a great wisdom — not only about the addictiveness of pleasures but about their ephemerality. The essence of addiction, after all, is that pleasure tends to desperate and leave the mind agitated, hungry for more. The idea that just one more dollar, one more dalliance, one more rung on the ladder will leave us feeling sated reflects a misunderstanding about human nature — a misunderstanding, moreover, that is built into human nature; we are designed to feel that the next great goal will bring bliss, and the bliss is designed to evaporate shortly after we get there. Natural selection has a malicious sense of humor; it leads us along with a series of promises and then keeps saying ‘Just kidding.’ As the Bible puts it, ‘All the labour of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.’ Remarkably, we go our whole lives without ever really catching on.The advice of the sages — that we refuse to play this game — is nothing less than an incitement to mutiny, to rebel against our creator. Sensual pleasures are the whip natural selection uses to control us to keep us in the thrall of its warped value system. To cultivate some indifference to them is one plausible route to liberation. While few of us can claim to have traveled far on this route, the proliferation of this scriptural advice suggests it has been followed some distance with some success.
Robert Wright
If humanity were capable of being satisfied, then they'd all still be living in trees and eating bugs out of one another's fur.
James S. Corey
Hurt can make you blind to the truth
Abby Clements
Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower’s point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.
Michael Pollan
They said I would never live. I lived. They said I would never think. I think. They said I would never walk. I walked. They said I would never dance, but I never danced anyway.
Benedict J. Groeschel
Human intellectual progress, such as it has been, results from our long struggle to see things 'as they are,' or in the most universally comprehensible way, and not as projections of our own emotions. Thunder is not a tantrum in the sky, disease is not a divine punishment, and not every death or accident results from witchcraft. What we call the Enlightenment and hold on to only tenuously, by our fingernails, is the slow-dawning understanding that the world is unfolding according to its own inner algorithms of cause and effect, probability and chance, without any regard for human feelings.
Barbara Ehrenreich
Not everyone understands what a completely rational process this is, this maintenance of a motorcycle. They think it's some kind of "knack" or some kind of "affinity for machines" in operation. They are right, but the knack is almost purely a process of reason, and most of the troubles are caused by what old time radio men called a "short between the earphones," failures to use the head properly. A motorcycle functions entirely in accordance with the laws of reason, and a study of the art of motorcycle maintenance is really a miniature study of the art of rationality itself.
Robert M. Pirsig
You act young," he said, "because you are young. But you know things, Roza. Things people older than you don't even know. That day...." I knew instantly which day he referred to. The one up against the wall. "You were right, about how I fight to stay in control. No one else has ever figured that out- and it scared me. You scare me.""Why? Don't you want anyone to know?"He shrugged. "Whether they know that fact or not doesn't matter. What matters is that someone- that you- know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend.""Like Tasha.""Tasha Ozera is an amazing woman. She's beautiful and she's brave. But she doesn't-""She doesn't get you," I finished.He nodded. "I knew that. But I still wanted the relationship. I knew it would be easy and that she could take me away from you. I thought she could make me forget you."I'd thought the same thing about Mason. "But she couldn't.""Yes. And, so.....that's a problem.
Richelle Mead
Sometimes just breathing is enough.
Marty Rubin
Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Sin also affects the conscience, until one becomes slow to detect the approach of sin.
Billy Graham
Taking his hand I said "Fank woo.""Hm " he laughed with his mouth closed.
Jennifer Echols
Don't give in to doubt. Never be discouraged if your first draft isn't what you thought it would be. Given skill and a story that compels you, muster your determination and make what's on the page closer to what you have in your mind. The chances are that you'll never make them identical. That's one reason I'm still hitting the keyboard. Obsessed by the secrets of my past, I try to put metaphorical versions of them on the page, but each time, no matter how honest and hard my effort, what's in my mind hasn't been fully expressed, compelling me to keep trying. To paraphrase a passage from John Barth's "Lost in the Funhouse," I'll die telling stories to myself in the dark. But there's never enough time. There was never enough time.
David Morrell
In the middle of the night I am awakened by a sound. I sit up abruptly in bed. I hear it again. It's music. Wait, it sounds like the ice cream man, in our house. Is this some kind of twisted nightmare? The flipping ice cream man, breaking in to chop us all up in our beds to the tune of 'Zippity Do Dah'?... My heart slows. I remember. There is no psycho ice cream man here. It is just our new musical soap dispenser...
Deb Caletti
Grady’s a man of action who craves excitement and needs plenty of activity, and he’s seen precious little of either in the ten or so years he’s been our sheriff. Well, let’s just say that since Candi Heart came to town, he’s had plenty to keep him busy, what with the stream of crimes that follows her around. And then there’s the mystery surrounding the woman herself. Suffice to say, Candi’s not quite what she appears and leave it at that.
Deborah Grace Staley
Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.
Philip G. Zimbardo
Be good, or good at it.
Belo Miguel Cipriani
Electricity, shelter, and a safe place to sleep . . .trump the need to preserve your credit score, orpurchase a new gizmo.
John-Talmage Mathis
It made me think how different everything might have been if we had both been born in Terravin.
Mary E. Pearson
I have to hold that up as a metaphor for everything, being prepared and then being brave enough to just be there. Just listen and follow, maybe jump. Everyone leans in, it brings them into your emotional vicinity because, you said "Risk creates intimacy
Mary-Louise Parker
If you're stuck in a puddle, it means there's higher ground all around you, you just have to step onto it.
Emilyann Girdner
What did you think of him?" Cade asked."Give me some credit," Zach said. "Guy’s more full of shit than a duck pond.
Christopher Farnsworth
Forgiveness requires a sacrifice of pride. A humbling of the spirit. An increase of selfless love. A time when you allow others' feelings to be more important than your own.
Ann H. Gabhart
There is something wonderful about a book. We can pick it up. We can heft it. We can read it. We can set it down. We can think of what we have read. It does something for us. We can share great minds, great actions, and great undertakings in the pages of a book.
Gordon B. Hinckley
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
Jack Kerouac
The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
Albert Einstein
Face the complexity involved in making ethical choices.
Linda Fisher Thornton
God has the flashlight, let Him LIGHT the way!
Mary Kate
Death always leaves one singer to mourn.
Katherine Anne Porter
Sometimes it’s like people are a million times more beautiful to you in your mind. It’s like you see them through a special lens — but maybe if it’s how you see them,that’s how they really are.
Jenny Han
Karma assures justice for all.
David V. Gaggin
Since she moved in, Carter found himself in the mood for a lot of things he hadn't been before. Crispy salmon wasn't one of them.
Kristin Miller
I am old enough now to have all the memories of my people locked within my head. I remember things that happened long before I was born. I remember things that never happened at all. I live in memory. –Anton
Orson Scott Card
I learned that, while rejection is the name of the game, I’m always going to be exactly what someone is looking for, eventually. Whether it is looks or personality, be it in the professional world or the dating world, what others have over me is irrelevant, because there’s always someone out there looking for an exact type of someone – a someone that I can completely fulfill. I’m not going to be everyone’s ideal, so focusing on the times I get passed over – be it the modeling industry or in real life – is a colossal waste of time.
Abby Rosmarin