Quotes by American Authors - Page 758

This very easy divorce had become very difficult. I thought I was in the express lane and it was all fast tracks from there. Think again.
Brenda Perlin
But that inadequacy, or feeling of inadequacy, never really goes away. You just have to trudge ahead in the rain, regardless.
Lorrie Moore
It will always take a good deal more courage to do something foolishly dangerous, when it is planned, than when it happens by surprise.
Steven J. Carroll
If you have to explain your sense of humor, then you are performing for the wrong crowd.
Shannon L. Alder
It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect.
Galt Niederhoffer
I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle.
David Levithan
If we presuppose that Jesus and God are one—as many (but not all) Christians do—then we can also infer that Jesus Christ was omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent, and it is with this that the idea of sacrifice is lost. The martyrdom was premeditated on the part of the Creator, and Jesus was resurrected afterward—showing that the act of ‘death’ was not an inconvenience for the immortal ‘man’ who was said to have known that he would be resurrected.
David G. McAfee
Then it was that Jo, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Beth's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Beth's unselfish ambition to live for others, and make home happy by that exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty.
Louisa May Alcott
New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Heroes do not dwell in a time of peace; heroes are hardened in a kiln against the sorrows. Their troubles sharpen the blade and make it gleaming. The glint becomes a brightness that is raised high on a hill, allowing women and men to see beyond themselves. For light swallows darkness. Truth buries death. Heroes are not born. They are filled by Music.
David Paul Kirkpatrick
It's always hard to deal with injuries mentally, but I like to think about it as a new beginning. I can't change what happened, so the focus needs to go toward healing and coming back stronger than before.
Carli Lloyd
He kissed her for an eternity, which was fine, because heaven had eternities to burn. Then he kissed her for another.
B.J. Novak
How would we get corporate sponsorship if we were just a bunch of thugs?
Kathy Bryson
Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.
Fern Schumer Chapman
This ferry was taken over by the Yumas and operated for them by a man named Callaghan, but within days it was burned and Callaghan's headless body floated anonymously downriver, a vulture standing between the shoulderblades in clerical black, silent rider to the sea.
Cormac McCarthy
One day I was telling him that I thought that cars had replaced guns as phallic symbols for American men, and I thought it was interesting that he had one that was so small and fast. The next day he gave me the Datsun and went out and bought a Lincoln.
Christopher Moore
But we're going to smile and pretend we're fine with the dorky birthmas gifts because people do not get that they can't mush a birthday into christmas.
P.C. Cast
Is it possible for home to be a person and not a place?
Stephanie Perkins
Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly.For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own.'Imagine, I didn't even know I could do this. That's some encouragement that i'mon the right track. If I have the stuff inside me to make cocoons—maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too.
Trina Paulus
Every new friend is a new journey, through a brand new road, toward a brand new mysterious heart.
Debasish Mridha
Of course she'll move away from me, and likely from here, because she is my daughter, because she is a daughter in the twenty-first century. But we can be her fall-back plan, and her stash of memories. Her deep and wide past.
Liz Stephens
The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.
Mark Twain
Scars, whether physical or emotional, could be not just a representation of survival but also a story of hope.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.
Maya Angelou
It's wisest always to be so clad that our friends need not ask us for our names.
James Fenimore Cooper
Writing is a craft, being an author is work, and having readers and a following is a gift.
Michael J. Kannengieser
The thing about stereotyping is it's usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it.
Criss Jami
Thomas More's Utopia was not a recommendation. It was a warning.
A.E. Samaan
We have constructed an artifice, a Potemkin village of an ecosystem where we perpetrate the illusion that the things we consume have just fallen off the back of Santa’s sleigh, not been ripped from the earth. The illusion enables us to imagine that the only choices we have are between brands.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
I cared about Ben, but I was never in love with him. I was in love with what it said about me that I had a boyfriend like Ben, and that's just different.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
He is the cheese to my macaroni.
Diablo Cody
I believe in family values and following your dreams.
JoAnne Myers
I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.
Lemony Snicket
Pleased to meet you." Sage said, offering his hand. "The pleasure is all mine," Rayna Purred. "Unless ofcourse, it's all Clea's which is even better."Sage smiled and might have even blushed a bit, which was highly entertaining.
Hilary Duff
He intrigued her. Powerful men, in her experience, were usually not so full of doubt. Kuni was consumed by the desire to do good for others, but uncertain what "good" might be and whether he was the right man for the job.Kuni was the sort of man, Risana realized, who, rather than deceive himself, was so full of self-doubt that he could not longer see himself
Ken Liu
Rhage exhaled slowly, air easing out of his nose. As he sank into his skin, he reveled in the perfection of peace. The heavenly silence. The great roaring absence.
J.R. Ward
I never fall in love because love is always inside me.
Debasish Mridha
Your body and spirit, subconscious and conscious—every portion of you recognizes home.  That is why on the moment of arrival, your entire being relaxes into a contented puddle of joy.
Richelle E. Goodrich
All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers.
Jack Kerouac
What is at the base of shame or guilt? It is the consciousness of an imbalance, or of an action in the past that has caused, and probably continues to cause, suffering.
Darrell Calkins
A balanced diet” is not so much about protein/fat/carbohydrate ratios. The real ratios to consider, at least for the typical American or European, are energy consumption/expenditure, pleasure/actual need, food/everything else.
Darrell Calkins
If you want to see, then begin to see how you see.
Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Whereas previous generations had to face some unpredictability, current generations are facing unprecedented levels of instability.
Miles Anthony Smith
Real men don’t kiss with the gentleness of a butterfly’s wing.
Mari Mancusi
Responsibility is a unique concept... You may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished. You may delegate it, but it is still with you... If responsibility is rightfully yours, no evasion, or ignorance or passing the blame can shift the burden to someone else. Unless you can point your finger at the man who is responsible when something goes wrong, then you have never had anyone really responsible.
Hyman G. Rickover
Time after time, history demonstrates that when people don't want to believe something, they have enormous skills of ignoring it altogether.
Jim Butcher
More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought.
Hyman G. Rickover
The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)
William S Burroughs
We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving … We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins … We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers … We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.
Courtney Martin
I made my life, the same way it looks like you're gonna make yours—out of pride and stubbornness and too much anger. You better think hard, Ruth Anne, about what you want and who you're mad at. You better think hard.
Dorothy Allison
My head is buried in the sands of tomorrow while my tail feathers are singed by the hot sun of today.
John Barrymore
Libraries are more than community centers, just as librarians do more than answer questions you could easily ask Google. From the opening of the BPL, the first public library, to the expansion of public libraries across America through the Carnegie libraries, the library as an institution has been fundamental to the success of our democracy. Libraries provide access to the skills and knowledge necessary to fulfill our role as active citizens. Libraries also function as essential equalizing institutions in our society. For as long as a library exists in most communities, staffed with trained librarians, it remains true that individuals' access to our shared culture is not dictated by however much money they have.
John Palfrey
We remain free, however, to listen to God's communication or not to listen, and free to respond or not to respond to what we hear. When we speak of contemplative prayer, we are speaking at the same time of awareness of this communication by God and of a willingness to listen and respond. Conscious relationship begins when I choose to listen to or to look at what the other is doing. After I have made this choice, I then freely decide whether to respond or not. Thus, by contemplative prayer we mean the conscious willingness and desire to look at and listen to God as God wishes to be for me and to respond. I may accept or reject God's initiative. in either case I have responded. When this process occurs, the person has the 'foodstuff' for beginning spiritual direction." (p. 34
William A. Barry
We all find means of anesthesia.
Brunonia Barry
Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating...too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.
John Wooden
Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e. with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science. It then continues with a more or less extended exploration of the area of anomaly. And it closes only when the paradigm theory has been adjusted so that the anomalous has become the expected.
Thomas Kuhn
Being suicidal is really tiring. A lot of suicides are so lacking in affect and so lethargic that they aren’t able to kill themselves until their mood improves—spring, for that reason, has the highest rate of what people in the business call “completed” suicides.
Charles D'Ambrosio
Everyone has an idea. But it’s really about executing the idea and attracting other people to help you work on the idea.
Jack Dorsey
Mr Arblaster first built his factory in 1884. It burnt down the following year. It was rebuilt in 1886 and was destroyed by an explosion during 1887 when eight lives were lost. The factory was once more rebuilt but blew up in 1888 when a lad was killed. It was built again, but on 11 December 1890 was once more wrecked by an explosion.
William Perry
There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.
Robyn Schneider