Quotes by American Authors - Page 753

Learn, Teach, Love, Experience and Grow. That's what I know about this life we live.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
There is no condition so miserable that thinking can't make it worse.
Marty Rubin
I want to disabuse people of the idea that knowledge is power. Knowing how to get to Detroit is not the same thing as having the bus fare.
Andrew Vachss
Stung, I lifted my eyes to his and saw them as if for the first time. Eyes the color of rain, soft as dew and strong enough to etch a mountainside. Tears shimmered there — tears, ay Mother! Or maybe they were in my own eyes.
Deborah Wheeler
Before entering into any kind of intimate relationships, whether friendship, familial re-connection, or romance, the idea of “needing” or “being needed” must be eliminated. It's harmful to me and others. Need is no kind of foundation for anything. Rather, I choose to be wanted. “Want” is a deliberate choice. Wanting is not based in fear or ego (which are one in the same, I believe). Want comes from recognition of someone else's goodness and loving them for it. Being wanted is unconditional. It does not require emotional games be played, it does not require reparations be made or obligations be met. Being wanted is good, in and of itself.
Jennifer DeLucy
Seems like nothing's getting safer or better," I said. "Seems like everything's getting worse." "Maybe that's what's gotta happen," Willa Mae said. "Maybe everything's gotta break lose and fall apart before we can put it back together again right.
Margaret McMullan
There are times you find yourself standing by the wayside, watching as someone struggles to dig a well with a spoon, and you wish with all your heart you had arms and a shovel.
Richelle E. Goodrich
On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace.
Alysha Speer
Experience comes from failure and success comes from experience. Today's pain will bring tomorrow's gain.
Debasish Mridha
It's not about saving humanity. It never has been." Mantrella, THE WAKING GOD TRILOGY
Philip F. Harris
Aye. 'Tis a free country."Monq had come to check on Elora just as she asked that question."Well, that kind of has to be qualified," he interjected. "You can't come or go without a passport. You can't drive without a driver's license, registration, auto insurance and proof that your vehicle is up to code. You can't work or even get health care without a social security number. You have to pay taxes on everything including air and water. The closest distance between point A and B may involve paying a road toll. There are over three hundred thousand federal laws. You have to educate your children according to legal standards set by someone that's not you. There are laws about who can marry whom. But other than a few more such trivialities, it's a free country.
Victoria Danann
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
Paul R. Ehrlich
What is love if not the gravity of souls?
Courtney M. Privett
Her eyes, full of ancient, sacred wisdom. Her bones, deposits of inherited bravery. She is a proud descendant of strong, courageous women who went to the stakes fighting for their truths.
Melody Lee
...if Clinton's answers come off as well-intended lectures, Obama is offering soaring sermons and generational opportunity. In 1960, the articulate Adlai Stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's. "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.' " At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes.
E.J. Dionne Jr.
The path to misery is paved by the tears of those trying to make others happy.
Steve Maraboli
The loudest elderly women always had the quietest elderly husbands.
Scott Douglas
Freedom means choosing your burden.
Hephzibah Menuhin
Look for daily beauty. Let the splendor of life fill your senses.
Amy Leigh Mercree
Bay stood there, red hair curling around her face and the mass tumbling down her back and over her shoulders. Her green eyes were bright with the fear she probably thought she’d hidden so well.” ENFORCER’S REDEMPTION
Carrie Ann Ryan
As far as I’m concerned, story is everything. It is why we get up in the morning and how we choose who to take to bed at night. Story is the thread that weaves together the very fabric of reality.
J.K. Norry
The Gospel should never be dull, for it is the most exciting and relevant news we could ever receive. When we find it dull, it is a warning sign that something is going on inside us and we need to take action to correct it.
Billy Graham
To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work fun of the most exhausting sort.
Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
It's not an easy thing to tell a true story.
Allen Morris Jones
Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
Lisabet Sarai
Change comes, when every person is adequately benefited.We keep hearing about “change.” Change will never come to all of society. Change can only come when the market system adequately provide all of the needs for all people. Millions are living in poverty in the United States and throughout the world, due to “change” passed them by, are struggling: Among them are high unemployment, the mentally challenged, poor education, many of them are homeless and hungry, sick and tired; such individuals, look for ways to move beyond their prison walls that hold them back from moving forward: Through the corridors of their prison, they observe the wealthy getting wealthier. They see the market system passing them at a fast rate of speed. Hope has long left the majority of them. There is a price that must be paid for the sins of those who have built these prisons.
Ellen J. Barrier
I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an inva
Christina Baker Kline
Even his own speeches bored him.
Barbara W. Tuchman
Play to win, not "not to lose".
Dondi Scumaci
No words would ever be more powerful than the presence of a friend.
Rachel L. Schade
All of us have failed to match our dream of perfection. I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible. If I could write all my work again, I'm convinced I could do it better. This is the healthiest condition for an artist. That's why he keeps working, trying again: he believes each time that this time he will do it, bring it off. Of course he won't.
William Faulkner
Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.
Hunter S. Thompson
Before everything, I used to do this thing when I was upset-I used to take all my feelings and push them down inside me. It was like they were garbage and I was compacting it to get more in. I felt like I could keep pushing all my feelings down into my socks and I wouldn't have to worry about them. I don't think I do that anymore.
Brent Runyon
There isn't a simple person anywhere in this world.
Kristin Cashore
We make messes of our lives, but every now and then, we manage to do something that's exactly right. The challenge is figuring out which is which.
Jodi Picoult
When the door to my writing chamber gasps shut and the almost imperceptible sigh of a rose petal falls on my desk, I know that my muse is present.
Brandi L. Bates
No, Ashok. Love is not a tap. It flows and flows like blood from a wound, and you can die of it.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I believe in the inherent good of people. I believe that someone can make a mistake and live to redeem themselves another day. Maybe that's why I don't believe in the death penalty. It forecloses all possibilities.
Carsen Taite
Of all the questions I have asked my readers this is the most important: What would you do if you weren't afraid? When you finally give wings to that answer then you have found your life's purpose.
Shannon L. Alder
Gemma, I’m not going to hurt you.” His voice is as smooth as silk as he winds around the bed, his radiant, green eyes fixed on me. “I promise I won’t hurt you. Everything’s okay.”I laugh sharply as I put weight on my weak legs. “That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth, which says a lot since you’re the biggest liar I’ve ever met.
Jessica Sorensen
Fiction: a game of pretend.
Marty Rubin
When it comes down to it, even on the natural plane, it is much happier and more enlivening to love than to be loved.
Dorothy Day
You’ll know that you and the vision are one when your actions flow out of a knowing that’s greater than your fears. Sure, you might be stunned by an obstacle, but it doesn’t determine your ultimate response. Your ultimate response comes from your true, authentic, pure voice.
Suzette R. Hinton
Spiritual mentors or peers who are mature in their relationship with God and whose present walk with God we trust can seek God with us and provide us with a sort of “safety net.” If we feel the Spirit is leading us to do something but recognize that much is at stake if we are wrong, we may do well to talk the matter over with other mature Christians. Proverbs advised rulers that wisdom rests in a multitude of counselors, and that advice remains valid for us as well. In the end, we may not always settle on the counsel others give us—like us, they too are fallible—but if they are diligent students of the Scriptures and persons of prayer, we should humbly consider their counsel.
Craig Keener
Until it has scared you with its endlessness, sky is just sky.
Jenny Hubbard
Maybe it's okay to still be a kid every once in a while.
Rick Riordan
There's nothing like a headless corpse to bring a touch of excitement into one's life.
Chet Williamson
President Thomas S. Monson has said: “God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity in the cloud, the oil in the earth. He left the rivers unbridged and the forests unfelled and the cities unbuilt. God gives to man the challenge of raw materials, not the ease of finished things. He leaves the pictures unpainted and the music unsung and the problems unsolved, that man might know the joys and glories of creation.” (in Quest of the Abundant Life, Ensign, March 1988) Put simply, the exhilaration of being creative and the feeling of accomplishment that often accompany hard work bring happiness. (Hank Smith, Be Happy)
Hank Smith
Don't underestimate the power of being underestimated.
Tim Fargo
But for the first time, Boaz couldn't think of a single word to describe this kind of loneliness, so scary and real it required an entirely different language, new and strange and yet to be invented
Molly Antopol
He's around the twist,' said Azalea. 'Breaking all the windows? He's mad.' to break all the windows in the house and drown yourself in a bucket but don't actually do it, well, that's love.
Heather Dixon
Computers brought philosophy into everyday life.
Sherry Turkle
My name is Percy Jackson. I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.Am I a troubled kid?Yeah. You could say that.
Rick Riordan
I may not believe in sin,” he said, “but I do feel guilt. We Shadowhunters live by a code, and that code isn’t flexible. Honor, fault, penance, those are real to us, and they have nothing to do with religion and everything to do with who we are. This is who I am, Clary," he said desperately.
Cassandra Clare
... the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the newgovernment owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, evenafter slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and theirdescendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
People ask all the time how I'm doing, but the truth is, they don't really want to know.
Jodi Picoult
It isn't so astonishing the number of things that I can remember as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.
Mark Twain
In short, this or that behavior wasn't good because scripture said so. Scripture mandated this or that behavior because it was good, and if it was already good before scripture said so, then it was good for some reason inherent to itself, some reason that reason could discover.
Tamim Ansary
It was the sixties, exactly, all we wanted to do was to smoke a lot of dope and ball a lot of chicks. Vietnam, excuse me? Why would I wanna go get my ass shot off in some stinking rice paddy just so Nixon can have his four more years? Screw that, and I wasn't the only one who felt that way. All the big warmongers these days who took a pass on Vietnam, look, I'd be the last person on earth to start casting blame. Bush, Cheney, Rove, all those guys, they just did what everybody else was doing and I was right there with 'em, chicken as anybody. My problem now is how tough and gung-ho they are, all that bring it on crap, I mean, Jesus, show a little humility, people. They ought to be just as careful of your young lives as they were with their own.
Ben Fountain
Am I a romantic? I've seen "Wuthering Heights" ten times. I'm a romantic.
Johnny Depp