Quotes by American Authors - Page 770

On the boardwalk the arcade jukebox plays all night surrounded by teenagers--sometimes twenty bodies deep, bare-skinned and full of energy for the music, for one another, for life, for the little bit of freedom they taste in the salt air and their skin. My father finds his place in this crowd. They are a force together. They don't do drugs. They don't drink. But they do music, and their power comes from their numbers and the thrill of being young on the beach at night.
Laura Schenone
This day is full of extraordinary things that you are missing. Wonderful sights, like the sun on your counterpane, the hairs on your cat's tail, the cracks in the paint on your radiator, the leaves piling up against the curve. Wonderful smells, wonderful sounds. Wonderful people. Wonderful opportunities. Today is wonderful. But perhaps you have lost your sense of wonder.
Danny Gregory
He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. “I miss you,” Isobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.
Erin Morgenstern
Someone is going to tell you to get use to this. That feeling of being scared and sad. They're going to say it'll be better when you learn to ignore it. Don't listen to them. Hold on to it, remember it... Don't let yourself forget it. It's too easy to lose.-Carl Grimes
Robert Kirkman
She's elegant," Olivia stated. "I would kill to have her figure.""Really?""Of course. I have always wished to look precisely like her. Though obviously, not enough to avoid food," she added."That's madness. You have everything she doesn't."Olivia opened her mouth, ready to argue. "Everything she hasn't."She frowned at him."Including me.
Eloisa James
Your heavenly eyes are shining like a late night starTo be in heaven, I like to get lost in those eyes forever.
Debasish Mridha
The road simply ended. No cul-de-sac. No sign like the ones they had seen before: "Private Property. No Trespassing." Or "No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point." Just road...then trees.
Robert Liparulo
Were archaeologists really such a sex-starved lot as all that? Did pigs really sweat?
Paul Russell
Life for dreamers may not be easy, but it beats drifting. You never know where you'll end up drifting, maybe someplace good, maybe not." - L. R. W. Lee
L.R.W. Lee
Make something people want and sell that, or be someone people need and sell you.
Ryan Lilly
And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats--then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water--seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.
Elizabeth Strout
If you are doing things in order to be happy...you're doing them in the wrong order.
Michael Neill
It is felt that there is something morally wrong with the abstract of reality offered by photography; that one has no right to experience the suffering of others at a distance, denuded of its raw power; that we pay too high a human (or moral) price for those hitherto admired qualities of vision - the standing back from the aggressiveness of the world which frees us for observation and for elective attention.
Susan Sontag
A bedraggled woman stood on his doorstep in the pouring rain, and his first impulse was to slam the door in her face.tBut she had clearly come as far as she could; her pale face was twisted in pain, and she shivered convulsively beneath a denim jacket that was as soaking wet as the rest of her. Long black strands of hair hung down in twisted ribbons like seaweed in the vanishing daylight, reminding him of a sea creature he'd once dated briefly in his more adventurous youth.
Deborah Blake
Once we are honest about our feelings, we can invite ourselves to consider alternative modes of viewing our pain and can see that releasing our grip on anger and resentment can actually be an act of self-compassion.
Sharon Salzberg
I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid.
Laurie Halse Anderson
The Waorani carry out a similar diet with their arrow poison, called curare or, in their language, oomae. This is another amazing product of the indigenous science, a most sophisticated technology that the Waorani extrapolated from an ancient myth.
Jonathon Miller Weisberger
Anger is the prelude to courage.
Eric Hoffer
I couldn't understand; cheating was the one thing I'd told her all those years ago would be unforgivable. She knew, she said, but that was part of what had been confusing her, that I would even have told her that, as if she weren't an actual human being with the freedom to act, but some character in a scenario in my head. There was a quality I had of making the people closest to me feel lonely, somehow. Some essential cold withholding at the core of myself.
Garth Risk Hallberg
The idea of going to the movies made Hugo remember something Father had once told him about going to the movies when he was just a boy, when the movies were new. Hugo's father had stepped into a dark room, and on a white screen he had seen a rocket fly right into the eye of the man in the moon. Father said he had never experienced anything like it. It had been like seeing his dreams in the middle of the day.
Brian Selznick
Truth has no beginning.
Mary Baker Eddy
Half of teachers leave the profession within their first four years, and kids with behaviour challenges and their parents are cited as one of the major reasons.
Ross W. Greene
AZRAEL:No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air.
Kevin Smith
He stops rocking the cage. "Oh, come on, Callie. It won't be fun if we don't rock it. In fact, the more we rock it, the better it'll feel." His voice drops to a deep whisper. "We can rock it nice and slow or really, really fast."..."Do I have your permission to rock away and give you the ride of your life?" Why does it feel like he's secretly talking dirty to me? "Yeah, go ahead, rock it nice and hard," I say without thinking, then bite down on my lip as the dirty section of my brain catches up with me. Honestly, I didn't even know that side existed.
Jessica Sorensen
Explore new avenues and look for ways to have a greater, much more influential impact on the world around you.
Mayur Ramgir
Now Pilon knew it for a perfect night. A high fog covered the sky, and behind it, the moon shone so so that the forest was filled with a gauze-like light. There was none of the sharp outline we think of as reality. The tree trunks were not black columns of wood, but soft and unsubstantial shadows. The patches of brush were formless and shifting in the queer light. Ghosts could walk freely to-night, without fear of the disbelif of men; for this night was haunted, and it would be an insensitive man who did not know it.
John Steinbeck
Prom night can be a special night, if you let it be. I know you think it's for losers and something that popular kids do because they are boring people with porcelain hearts who don't know what it means to be lonely. But you're wrong. Prom is a chance for everyone to try oral sex. Go for it.
Eugene Mirman
This is the secret of happiness that you have been looking for:If you are moving in the direction of your identified desires, you're happy in this moment.If you're moving in opposition to your identified desires, you are unhappy in this moment.
Abraham-Hicks
She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her book cart as she wheeled it down the aisle, and the books themselves, symbols of order on their backs - young adulthood reduced to "YA," mystery reduced to a tiny red skull.
T.E.D. Klein
Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
Helen Keller
If I was harsh with you, it was because I cannot bear to see you treat yourself as if you are worth nothing. Whatever part you might act to the contrary, I see you as you really are, my blood brother. Not just better than you pretend to be, but better than most people could hope to be.
Cassandra Clare
What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have?
Cheryl Strayed
Never give up hope. If you do, you'll be dead already.--Dementia Patient, Rose from The Inspired Caregiver
Peggi Speers
A thin, polished woman walks in. She sticks out immediately in her expensive looking navy dress, shiny bag and shoes that probably cost more than I make in a month. My breath leaves me when I see that her arm is draped around a younger version of herself. That hair, it's pulled back way too tight now, but I'd run my hands through it a thousand times before. That face, now in layer of makeup that makes her look older than I remember, I'd held it in my calloused hands and kissed those lips goodbye over a year ago. She said she'd never see me again and I learned to accept that. She destroyed me, and I'd moved on.No. Not her. She's not from here anymore. I don't know who that person is anymore.
Jolene Perry
We must rewrite our story from one of fear to one of celebration.
Kameron Hurley
A horrible end is better than endless horror.
Oliver Markus
I liked being needed by him. I liked making his food for him, running his baths for him, massaging his muscles. I liked caring for him, taking care of him. It made me feel like I had a real purpose. It felt so good to make him feel even the littlest bit better.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
If you keep pushing away the ones who are trying to love you, eventually, they'll stop trying.
Elizabeth Bourgeret
The little room was full of ordinary things that had already become precious, that I couldn't help but want to have again, to feel like whoever it was I used to be, whether it was my past or someone else's.
Wendy McClure
They, they, they. That was the problem with people like Joyce. They talked about the richness of their multicultural heritage and it sounded real good, until you noticed that they avoided black people. It wasn't a matter of conscious choice, necessarily, just a matter of gravitational pull, the way integration always worked, a one-way street. The minority assimilated into the dominant culture, not the other way around. Only white culture could be neutral and objective. Only white culture could be nonracial, willing to adopt the occasional exotic into its ranks. Only white culture had individuals. And we, the half-breeds and the college-degreed, take a survey of the situation and think to ourselves, Why should we get lumped in with the losers if we don't want to? We become only so grateful to lose ourselves in the crowd, America's happy, faceless marketplace; and we're never so outraged as when a cabbie drives past us or the woman in the elevator clutches her purse, not so much because we're bothered by the fact that such indignities are what less fortunate coloreds have to put up with every single day of their lives-- although that's what we tell ourselves-- but because we're wearing a Brooks Brothers suit and speak impeccable English and yet have somehow been mistaken for an ordinary nigger.Don't know who I am? I'm an individual!
Barack Obama
To be in peace, grow calmness and compassion in your heart.
Debasish Mridha
You can't let your past write the future
Janny Wurts
The police have asked for my help. There's been a murder.""A murder! Oh, my. Let me just change my shoes," Evie said excitedly. "It won't be a minute.
Libba Bray
It might come a time to not follow your passion, so to speak, although it must be prioritized. It may be the case that your passion will serve as the medic, your peace of mind, alongside a higher calling, with your higher calling being the point man.
Criss Jami
Heaven is not in the sky, but it is in your blissful mind.
Debasish Mridha M.D.
To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.
Barack Obama
I have always kept a stack of library books next to my bed as a lifeline. If I ever woke in the middle of the night too scared to move or too sad to roll over, the books were my saviors.
Julie Halpern
Kurt Cilke liked dogs because they could not conspire. They could not hide hostility, and they were not cunning. They did not lie awake at night planning to rob and murder other dogs. Treachery was beyond their scope.
Mario Puzo
Have you ever suffered a sharp disappointment or a painful loss and found yourself looking for someone to blame? Have you, for example, ever been nasty to a store clerk when you were really upset about your job? Most people have an impulse to dump bad feelings on some undeserving person, as a way to relieve - temporarily—sadness or frustration. Certain days you may know that you just have to keep an eye on yourself so as not to bite someone’s head off.The abusive man doesn’t bother to keep an eye on himself, however. In fact, he considers himself entitled to use his partner as a kind of human garbage dump where he can litter the ordinary pains and frustrations that life brings us. She is always an available target, she is easy to blame — since no partner is perfect—and she can’t prevent him from dumping because he will get even worse if she tries. His excuse when he jettisons his distresses on to her is that his life is unusually painful—an unacceptable rationalization even if it were true, which it generally isn’t.
Lundy Bancroft
There's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore.An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.
Lauren Oliver
Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence."Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers.
Karen Karbo
Anger is the wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.
Bodie Thoene
So..." Her shoulders lifted and dropped. "What? You're going to let that walking cane snuff out the eternally grinning smart-ass that loves inside you?
Candis Terry
Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. That is to say, you cannot love game and hate predators... The land is one organism.
Aldo Leopold
I was worried about my own vagina. It needed a context of other vaginas-- a community, a culture of vaginas. There's so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them-- like the Bermunda Triangle.
Eve Ensler
The more I lived with Jan, the more I loved her, the more I made her miserable. It was a vicious cycle (page 209)……The more I loved her the more I hated her. And the more she loved me, the more I harmed myself (page 269).
Marvin Gaye
We have this history of impossible solutions to insoluble problems.
Will Eisner
You know" - Hale's breath was warm against Kat's ear in the chilly ballroom- "I don't know that both of us really have to be here...." The slide changed. While hundreds of mathematicians waited with baited breath, the boy beside Kat whispered,"I could go make some calls... check on some things...""Play some blackjack?""Well, when in Rome...""Rome is tomorrow, babe," Kat reminded him.He nodded. "Right.
Ally Carter
Sorvus's eyes widened then fell as she accepted whatever fate had in store for her. "It will be as it will, Thristan." Thristan looked at her intently, bringing his head back with a frustrated sigh. "Ah, this 'destiny' crap you all talk about!
Madison Thorne Grey
But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.
Truman Capote