Quotes by American Authors - Page 718

What companies want most from their managers is what they most stop their managers from giving. What managers want most from their jobs is what they most stop themselves from getting.
Stan Slap
Ambition is the driving engine behind every great success.
Debasish Mridha
Yes, she's bleeding to death upstairs, but I thought I'd avoid telling you right away, because I like to draw the suspense out.
Cassandra Clare
The slate black sky. The middle stepof the back porch. And long agomy mother's necklace, the beadsrolling north and south. Brokenthe rose stem, water into drops, glassknob on the bedroom door. Last summer'spot of parsley and mint, white rootsshooting like streamers through the cracks.Years ago the cat's tail, the bird bath,the car hood's rusted latch. Brokenlittle finger on my right hand at birth--I was pulled out too fast. What hasn''tbeen rent, divided, split? Broken the days into nights, the night skyinto stars, the stars into patternsI make up as I trace themwith a broken-off bladeof grass. Possible, unthinkable,the cricket's tiny back as I lieon the lawn in the dark, my harta blue cup fallen from someone's hands.
Dorianne Laux
The pits and tangles are more than blemishes distorting the classic shapes of Euclidian geometry. They are often the keys to the essence of a thing
James Gleick
I must change in order to change the world. The only revolution with any permanent value takes part in the breast of the individual person.
Stephen Covey
The inability to get something out of your head is a signal that shouts, “Don’t forget to deal with this!” As long as you experience fear or pain with a memory or flashback, there is a lie attached that needs to be confronted. In each healing step, there is a truth to be gathered and a lie to discard.
Christina Enevoldsen
Bellamy had come down from scanning the heavens only to find himself in the depths of hell.
Kass Morgan
Siddhartha considered the ways of the demon, and in that moment he struck.
Roger Zelazny
You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn't know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the word for mom.
Soojung Jo
Fight one more round. When your feet are so tired that you have to shuffle back to the centre of the ring, fight one more round. When your arms are so tired that you can hardly lift your hands to come on guard, fight one more round. When your nose is bleeding and your eyes are black and you are so tired you wish your opponent would crack you one on the jaw and put you to sleep, fight one more round – remembering that the man who always fights one more round is never whipped.
James Corbett
Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it’s so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, ‘Are you on the rag of something?’ And it’s like I want to say, ‘No. I’m just pissed off right now. Can’t I just be pissed off? How come that’s not okay for me?’ Like my dad will say, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re hysterical.’ And I’m totally not being hysterical! I’m just mad. And he’s the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not.
Libba Bray
I can't--I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe--I just--""Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just... Can we just go back to the others?""I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop--" He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind."I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore.
Alexandra Bracken
Thank you, NASA, for keeping watch and realizing that our universe will never be anything but light-years new. I want to understand that, and I am so comforted by the fact that I can't. It only proves that some things won't allow themselves to be understood. They aren't for us to know and there's rapture in that, don't you think? Are you happy there, with your eyes glued to the heavens? You know so much, like why the ocean doesn't fall out of the sky, and that there is no upside down. There is no up.
Mary-Louise Parker
A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.
John A. Shedd
•tJudge less–or at least later.•tGive new ideas and images a chance.•tUnderstand that everyone has his own truth or her own.•tRemember: you are not married to any belief, opinion, or ideology.•tExpect to discover something delicious every day. (260)
Victoria Moran
Even if we all want you here, you don't belong until you decide you do.
Stephenie Meyer
My problem is I say what I'm thinking before I think what I'm saying.
Laurence J. Peter
The best is always worth waiting for. And once you taste it, no other taste will do.
T.F. Hodge
I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.
Courtney Love
Can one mistake really destroy a lifetime together?
Marie Lu
Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, "My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war.
Sinclair Lewis
There aren't any syringes." Red Sox came over and held a sterile pack out. When she tried to take it from him, he kept a grip on the thing. "I know you'll use this wisely.""Wisely?" She snapped the syringe out of his hand. "No, I'm going to poke him in the eye with it. Because that's what they trained me to do in medical school.
J.R. Ward
When the world began, there were no such things as monsters. Demons were just fallen angels who, booted out of Heaven and bored with Hell, wandered the Earth sticking little girls’ pigtails in inkwells and sinking the occasional continent.
Richard Kadrey
Writers are like supreme beings. We can create worlds in a matter of days and we can destroy them just as fast.
Linda Nelson
You might just be the craziest person I've ever know, but you're also the bravest. - Marcus
J. Scott Savage
Whenever it is possible a boy should choose some occupation which he should do even if he did not need the money.
William Lyon Phelps
The purpose and point of this life is to learn and love – and it may be more specifically to learn to love.
Kimberly Giles
If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know how much truth is stronger than errors, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.
Henry David Thoreau
And a special thanks for not burning up the whole ship. Including yourself, you daft bum-rag.
Scott Westerfeld
So maybe the difference isn't language. Maybe it's this: animals do neither good nor evil. They do as they must do. We may call what they do harmful or useful, but good and evil belong to us, who chose to choose what we do. The dragons are dangerous, yes. They can do harm, yes. But they're not evil. They're beneath our morality, if you will, like any animal. Or beyond it. They have nothing to do with it. We must choose and choose again. The animals need only be and do. We're yoked, and they're free. So to be with an animal is to know a little freedom...
Ursula K Le Guin
He had to escape. He had to go and become a hero, the way he had been once.
Cassandra Clare
You did what your heart told you to do,' Brain complimented. 'It is what leaders, not followers, do.
Tonya Hurley
It could be that God has absconded but spread, as our vision and understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem.
Annie Dillard
It is a burden...(M)ake no mistake about that. Any great gift or power or talent is a burden and this more than any, and you will long to be free of it. But there is nothing to be done. If you were born with the gift, then you must serve it, and nothing in this world or out of it may stand in the way of that service, because that is why you were born and that is the Law."- Susan Cooper ("Merriman" The Dark is Rising)
Susan Cooper
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson
The accusations make me want to be kid again. Why isn't my mommy calling them big fat liars?
Kendare Blake
Sometimes all thats left is faith.
Renae A.Sauter
As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson
Orson Scott Card
Sometimes the only path we can maneuver is from the bed to the bathroom. That's okay. Let your journey be what it is . Just keep moving.
Toni Sorenson
Harriet loved her new persona. As Maxine, she was courageous and accomplished, a woman of sophistication equally at home in Cannes or on the Indian subcontinent. As Maxine she didn't walk, she strode; she did not merely see, but beheld. The very air she breathed was bracing. Here was a conqueror of worlds.
Diane Hammond
God made man stronger but not necessarily more intelligent. He gave women intuition and femininity. And, used properly, that combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.
Farrah Fawcett
Jason's fingers itched to draw his sword. He'd met plenty of scary demigods, but he was starting to realize that Nico di Angelo--as pale and gaunt as he looked--might be more than he could handle.
Rick Riordan
I look back on my life the way one watches a badly scripted action flick, sitting at the edge of the seat, bursting out, "No, no, don't open that door! The bad guy is in there and he'll grab you and put his hand over your mouth and tie you up and then you'll miss the train and everything will fall apart!" Except there is no bad guy in this tale. The person who jumped through the door and grabbed me and tied me up was, unfortunately, me. My double image, the evil skinny chick who hisses, Don't eat. I'm not going to let you eat. I'll let you go as soon as you're thin, I swear I will. Everything will be okay when you're thin.
Marya Hornbacher
The only thing worse than having a party that no one attends is having a party attended only by two vastly, deeply uninteresting people.
John Green
They had met at a club fifteen years before, Etta and Magnus. He had convinced her to dance with him, and she said she had been in love by the end of the song. He told her he had been in love before the beginning.
Cassandra Clare
Being present to yourself in love and with kindness is the ultimate gift.
Amy Leigh Mercree
I may not know what my heart truly holds, but who does? I think we're all mysteries, even to ourselves.
Carolyn Ives Gilman
The sun rises with a surprising intensity, a sign that June Gloom has cleared the runway and July is on approach. We are both tired, and it would've been to return to our bed after our morning walk, read from a book maybe, drift lazily in and out of sleep. But the sun beckons with a blazingly confrontational message: There is darkness, but there is also light. To stay in bed would be to embrace the darkness, the seizures, the octopus. To go outside is to embrace the light.
Steven Rowley
I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992]
Cormac McCarthy
Something deep in the human soul awakens as things fall apart. Something in the soul knows that everything in this world can become lost. And something in the soul knows how to survive periods of devastation, disorientation and loss. Descent and falling is the way of the soul from its beginning. We each fell from the womb of life when the waters of the inner sea broke and it came time for us to breathe on our own.
Michael Meade
Even in the middle of a noisy mass of students, one girl’s laugh grabbed my attention.
Melissa Darnell
We become what we believe
Lolly Daskal
When I missed the physical body of my partner, I meditated on its parts, tossed by the waves, torn, dispersed, and deteriorated. When memories of our lives together became acute and intense, I breathed. I breathed through each wave of yearning, of regret, of guilt, of what-could-have-been. Every time I asked him, “Where are you?” A quiet voice immediately responded, “I am here. I have never left you.” I did not only lose a partner. I lost my childhood all over again. I lost my soul mate. I lost the accepting father and the gentle mother that he was to me. I lost the dream of a “normal life,” which I had tried so hard to achieve. Now I had to face my own mind.
Dang Nghiem
A tightly woven argument is more impermeable to the frigid winds of criticism.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got.
Betty Smith
Don’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.
Diana Gabaldon
I'm like a stray cat. If you feed me, I don't leave.
Michelle M. Pillow
Discipline your mind to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event.Discipline your mind to think positively to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event.
Roy T. Bennett
The beauty you see in others is within you.
Maria Dorfner