Quotes by American Authors - Page 687

Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.
Ron Suskind
This is the time for every artist in every genre to do what he or she does loudly and consistently. It doesn't matter to me what your position is. You've got to keep asserting the complexity and the originality of life, and the multiplicity of it, and the facets of it. This is about being a complex human being in the world, not about finding a villain. This is no time for anything else than the best that you've got.
Toni Morrison
Here is where some entrepreneurs fail. They are filled with creative juices and total commitment to their business but too often they don't understand that they must also be managers administrators even gofers-at least for a while.
Lillian Vernon
They're terrified of us Firefly, all of them are.""Well, good," I replied, forming a tiny ball of flames in my fingertips, which were curled round the handle on the back of the bike. "They should be.
Heather James
Believe in everything, just in case.
Camila Cabello
Wc What this country needs is more unemployed politicians.
Angela Davis
some libraries are no longer called libraries but are known as Learning Resource Centers or Media Centers. Librarians, however, are still generally known as librarians and not yet as Learning Resourcists or Media Centerists, though this may be only a matter of time.
Richard Armour
Her bedroom window overlooked the garden, and now and then, usually when she was "having a bad spell," Mr. Helm had seen her stand long hours gazing into the garden, as though what she saw bewitched her. ("When I was a girl," she had once told a friend, "I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things, and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough...")
Truman Capote
Years ago, when I was working on my master's thesis, I went to New York for a semester as an exchange student. What struck me most was the sky. On that side of the world, so far away from the North Pole, the sky is flat and gray, a one-dimensional universe. Here, the sky is arched, and there's almost no pollution. In spring and fall the sky is dark blue or violet, and sunsets last for hours. The sun turns into a dim orange ball that transforms clouds into silver-rimmed red and violet towers. In winter, twenty-four hours a day, uncountable stars outline the vaulted ceiling of the great cathedral we live in. Finnish skies are the reason I believe in God.
James Thompson
In near panic, I craned my neck to gaze over the cabin’s roofline a bursting fireball.
Ed Lynskey
Share your success stories with others. Don't brag, but don't hide your light. People want (and need) to be inspired and instructed. I know I want to follow and learn from successful people. Isn't that the basis for every business and self-help book? People will also give you good ideas to build on your own wins when you share openly. And when you write out your wins to an audience, your own ideas start to grow within you. Will you try? What's a win you've had lately? Don't be shy about it.
Richie Norton
Tell me again, exactly what Dr. Thorn said.""Um, I hate middle school dances.""No,no. After that.
Rick Riordan
To be wise: You take the knowledge you have gained and use it to script words together to benefit yourself and others.
Stacy Snapp-Killian aka StacyK
The thing about having it all is, it should include having the ability to have it all. Maybe there are some people who know how to have it all. They're probably off in a group somewhere, laughing at those of us who have it all but don't know how to.
Carrie Fisher
Everyone claims to want the truth. If you really want it, I’d suggest investing seriously in humor and this mysterious skill of transforming bad news into good. Otherwise, you’ll only get more frustrated.
Darrell Calkins
Do what you love to do, and do it with both seriousness and lightness. At least then you will know that you have tried and that--whatever the outcome--you have traveled a noble path.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Otherwise the silence in the room was profound, the silence of places Brian had not yet been: gazing at the lifeless body of a beloved, the echo of a lost illusion, the tinnitus of betrayal.
Rafael Yglesias
Phoenix wouldn’t stop looking at me like he was looking through a telescope. It was unsettling, being stared at like I was the most beautiful thing in space.
Briana Pacheco
Books are humanity in print.
Barbara W. Tuchman
I sometimes give myself excellent advice. Occasionally, I even listen to it.
Jim Butcher
I hate him, too," she shivered. "I hate his damned suffering.
Earnest Hemingway
You're torn between wanting to be closer and wanting to push me away," he said. "So I vote for closer. I'll always vote for closer.
Martina Boone
Riley Blackthorne - kicking hell's ass one demon at a time.
Jana Oliver
It’s important that young people know about the struggles we faced to get to the point we are today. Only then will they appreciate the hard-won freedom of blacks in this country.
Amelia Boynton Robinson
The next time you come to the Cookie Jar, the coffee’s on me. You could probably bottle that stuff of yours and sell it for rat poison.
Joanne Fluke
The same wolfish greed beats in your heart: to have what you will, and kill for it.
Rosamund Hodge
There's stranger sex than sex with strangers.
Kris Kidd
I wanted to say something about the universe. There's God angels plants... and horseshit.
Zero Mostel
I, myself, often wished to be spared the expectation of better days ahead or such.
Daniel Woodrell
The wind comes across the plains not howling but singing. It's the difference between this wind and its big-city cousins: the full-throated wind of the plains has leeway to seek out the hidden registers of its voice. Where immigrant farmers planted windbreaks a hundred and fifty years ago. it keens in protest; where the young corn shoots up, it whispers as it passes, crossing field after field in its own time, following eastward trends but in no hurry to find open water. You can't usually see it in paintings, but it's an important part of the scenery.
John Darnielle
But here was where the question of talent became slippery, for who could say whether Spirit-in-the-Woods had ever pulled incipient talent out of a kid and activated it, or whether the talent had been there all along and would have come out even without this place.
Meg Wolitzer
Before a painter puts a brush to his canvas he sees his picture mentally. ... If you think of yourself in terms of a painting what do you see? ... Is the picture one you think worth painting? . . . You create yourself in the image you hold in your mind.
Thomas Dreier
The true measure of a man is how he treats you when others are not looking.
Alessandra Torre
Koch's youthful idealism about libertarianism had largely devolved into a rationale for corporate self-interest.
John Charles Chasteen
Having money is about handling it the correct way. In my lifetime, I've both lost and made millions.
Chris Mentillo
How often in our lives have we withheld the truth from someone we’re supposed to love? We justify it by telling ourselves we’re doing them some kindness, when in reality, we’re just being selfish. We don’t want them to know the truth because if they did, well, they might not love us anymore. How many of us have ever felt that no one would love us if they knew the real us? Love bears all things, the Bible tells us. The truth is, everyone who really loves you can bear the real you.
Erin O'Riordan
I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is useless for me to describe to you how terrible Violet, Klaus, and even Sunny felt in the time that followed. If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.
Lemony Snicket
People in this world, on this planet, all of these people are lonely. To varying degrees, human beings are lonely. Many are not; but too many are. And they are too frequently lonely, too. They fill their minds with things called dreams, plans, conclusions, outlooks, new stuff, self-imagery, self-esteem, illusions, fabrications; all of these things are noisy. They fill their minds up with all the things that are noisy enough to drown out the silence of their loneliness. And they think they're going somewhere because they gauge direction and success based upon the measurements of the distance covered over the platforms of the things they fill their minds with. The noise they fill their minds with. In reality, they're not going anywhere. They are sitting right there alone in that empty room of their minds where their hearts ache (or are numb), yet the walls are covered in noisy things, the corners filled with noisy things! It's a horror story, really. The people of this world are living inside a horror story and it is taking place within their minds. And you wonder why this world is unkind? You wonder why this world is violent, is unfulfilled, is half-baked? THIS is the reason why.
C. JoyBell C.
There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness: I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.
James Weldon Johnson
Celebration comes when the common features of life are redeemed.
Richard J. Foster
If there is any god, then love is his religion and love is his prayer.
Debasish Mridha
Human Error lies in judgment. While many will say that it's wrong to judge, one cannot survive in the light or the darkness without equipping the ability to judge. One must judge their morality. One must judge their potentiality. One must judge their actuality. One must judge their life. One must judge their very existence. What happens when God no longer lends a helping a hand? What happens whenGod longer judges you? Only you can be the arbiter of your own existence. However, you will have to judge. So let me ask you, what's the difference between judging the subjective reality that one exists in, and judging the value of the subjective reality of another? The only difference lies is the sameness of one conception...judgment. So tell me, is it wrong to judge others, when your very existence depends on you judging reality for validity?
Lionel Suggs
Shift your consciousness to a higher consciousness to see the beauty and joy all around you. Immerse yourself in beauty and will see everyone will be eager to join you.
Debasish Mridha
You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.
Paul Auster
Do I believe in God? Sure. So I believe the Bible is the arbiter of theological knowledge? There it gets a little hazy.
Don Hoesel
The Internet is the aggregate of human derpitude.Listening to the Internet without being confident you've found a well-curated garden relative to the area of concern is a bad idea.
Jeff Alexander
He continued to stare out the window. "I meant what I said before. You need to walk away, Pidge. God knows I can't walk away from you.
Jamie McGuire
Choose to be pro-active, assertive and self-defining.
Bryant McGill
I adore imaginary monsters, but I am terrified of real ones.
Teju Cole
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best part of having superpowersis that most of the time other people do not even know that you have them— like when Peter Parker goes paintballing,people just think he is a really awesome paintballer,and he totally gets away with using his Spidey senses,and when Aquaman is on OkCupid,and he says he spends a lot of timethinking about global warming, people just think he’s a conscientiousdude, and on the days that I get out of bed and put on appropriate workplace attireand eat three meals, none of which are Hot Pockets,people can’t even tell that right then,at that moment,I am using my superpowers.Anxiety is your body’s response to perceived dangerand mine is so strongyou would have to call it a superpower.It never gives up;It is always looking for a fight;It is the fiercest part of me.
Brenna Twohy
I will gladly deal with the inconveniences that may attend living my life as I see fit, rather than be the kind of man who would forsake his own desires in order to seek or preserve the acceptance of lesser men.~ Dave Champion
Dave Champion
In our hallway, ablaze with welcoming lights, my Lolita peeled off her sweater, shook her gemmed hair, stretched towards me two bare arms, raised one knee:“Carry me upstairs, please. I feel sort of romantic tonight.”It may interest physiologists to learn, at this point, that I have the ability - a most singular case, I presume - of shedding torrents of tears throughout the other tempest.
Vladimir Nabokov
Christians do not believe that there is one God and three Gods. Nor do we believe that God is one person and three persons. That would clearly be contradictory and therefore logically impossible. Rather, the doctrine of the Trinity is that there is one God who eternally exists as three distinct persons. We believe that The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit are each individual persons in their own right, but they all share the same divine essence. Saying that "God is one being who consists of three persons" is no more contradictory than saying that "There's one triangle that consists of three corners
Evan Minton
Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.
Chuck Palahniuk
The focusing of attention on the breath is perhaps the most universal of the many hundreds of meditation subjects used worldwide.
Jack Kornfield
It's called the Infinity Effect.
Edward M. Wolfe
The situation on Earth today is too dire for us to act from habit—to reenact again and again the same kinds of solutions that brought us to our present extremity. Where does the wisdom to act in entirely new ways come from? It comes from nowhere, from the void; it comes from inaction. When we see it, we realize it was right in front of us all along. It is never far away; yet at the same time it is in a different universe—a different Story of the World.
Charles Eisenstein
Fear--who cares?
Elizabeth Gilbert