Quotes by American Authors - Page 777

With ceremony, with forms of politeness and reassurance, they borrowed the waters of the River and its little confluents to drink and be clean and irrigate with, using water mindfully, carefully. They lived in a land that answers greed with drought and death. A difficult land: aloof yet sensitive.
Ursula K Le Guin
I know I will never be happy, but I know I can be gay!
Marilyn Monroe
I'm glad you turned cartwheels here."tSamantha heard the note of loneliness in his voice. "You did hear me say back tuck? Because that was my coolest move."tHis arm came around her shoulders, and they started across the space again. "Back tuck. Coolest move. Got it.
Erin Kellison
It’s best to have a small boat of friends where everyone rows than an ark of friends where no one does. At least you’re getting somewhere.
Ron Baratono
Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you're prone to disaster fantasies, you may even find yourself caught in the middle, staring at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand it if you do.Fears arise when you look back, and they arise when you look ahead. If you're prone to disaster fantasies, you may even find yourself caught in the middle, staring at your half-finished canvas and fearing both that you lack the ability to finish it, and that no one will understand it if you do.To which the Master replied, 'What makes you think that ever changes?'That's why they're called Masters. When he raised David's discovery from an expression of self-doubt to a simple observation of reality, uncertainty became an asset. Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution -- and it should be. Vision, Uncertainty, and Knowledge of Materials are inevitabilities that all artists must acknowledge and learn from: vision is always ahead of execution, knowledge of materials is your contact with reality, and uncertainty is a virtue.
David Bayles
If we have no mercy toward others, that is one proof that we have never experienced God’s mercy.
Billy Graham
A file on a hard disk does indeed contain information of the kind that objectively exists. The fact that the bits are discernible instead of being scrambled into mush - the way heat scrambles things - is what makes them bits.But if the bits can potentially mean something to someone, they can only do so if they are experienced. When that happens, a commonality of culture is enacted between the storer and the retriever of the bits. Experience is the only process that can de-alienate information.Information of the kind that purportedly wants to be free is nothing but a shadow of our own minds, and wants nothing on its own. It will not suffer if it doesn't get what it wants.But if you want to make the transition from the old religion, where you hope God will give you an afterlife, to the new religion, where you hope to become immortal by getting uploaded into a computer, then you have to believe information is real and alive. So for you, it will be important to redesign human institutions like art, the economy, and the law to reinforce the perception that information is alive. You demand that the rest of us live in your new conception of a state religion. You need us to deify information to reinforce your faith.
Jaron Lanier
A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.
Theodore Sturgeon
I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we've got to do it right. We've got to give those animals a decent life and we've got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.
Temple Grandin
I was out on a lonely road that stretched forever into the darkness. I wanted to run, to get away from him, but it was so dark, I was afraid of where I was going.
Christina Dodd
If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in line at the super market. Or we can be lost in awe at all the people around us, their lives full of glory and tragedy, and suddenly we will have the beginnings of a painting, a story, a song.
Madeleine L'Engle
John raised an eyebrow. “So you wouldn’t date someone like you?”“Oh, hell, no. I’m insane, but that would be nuts.
Forrest Carr
i've loved you since the sun first rose," he read. "Ive loved you through God send Catastrophe and manmade Disaster. I've loved you though my heart stopped beating and my eyes ran dry, through time and in spite of it, for our love has its roots in eternity and cannot fall victim to time or death. My love has no shame, no pride. it is only what it is, always has been and always will be. It is Yours. all Yours. Only Yours Gregory went cold with fear-
Trevor Meldal-Johnsen
I am powerful in my love for myself. The truth of my being is I love myself exactly as I am. I honor my empowered heart.
Amy Leigh Mercree
So if it seems like you're doing something different from what everyone else is doing, and if sometimes that feels hard, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Craig Groeschel
His embrace left her breathless and restored all the faith she'd lost in the power of love. When their lips parted, she sighed and said, 'I don't need a party or anything else. All I need is you. I love you.' (Wildflowers)
Catherine Greenfeder
We were letting go of October, relinquishing color,readying ourselves for streets lacquered with ice,the town closed like a walnut, locked inside the cold.
Mark Perlberg
All they expect from you is your best effort. These Marines think that they are special. They are very well trained, very close knit, and they don't like outsiders. If you want their respect, you will have to earn it.
Bruce H. Norton
Do you not think, Mrs. Givings, that snow is always kind? Because it has to fall slowly, to meet the ground slowly, or the eyelash slowly— And things that meet each other slowly are kind.
Sarah Ruhl
Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.
Elbert Hubbard
Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind. (Messenger and Advocate Oct 1934 pp 14-16)
Oliver Cowdery
I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn’t become still more complicated.
Poul Anderson
Often we see detox as a solitary pursuit, something we have to muscle up for and go it alone. But the truth is that it will be easier and healthier if you find a way to integrate your friends and family into the experience.
Woodson Merrell
Allowing yourself to forgive will fuel your goals and life vision with new energy.
Eileen Anglin
Everybody should have a librarian.
Beth Fantaskey
War is a primarily a game of skill. It is a Contest of mind matched against mind, tactics matched against tactics.But there is also an element of chance that is more suited to games of cards or dice. A wise tactician studies those games, as well, and learns from them.The first lesson of card games is that the cards cannot be played in random order. Only when laid down properly can victory be achieved. In this case, there were but three cards.The first was played at the encampment. The result was entrance to the Strikefast. The second was played aboard ship. The result was promise of passage to Coruscant, and the assignment of Cadet Vanto as my translator.The third was a name: Anakin Skywalker.
Timothy Zahn
I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.They may be teaching that still.Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
We are nothing but a few atoms arranged in an intricate organized way.
Debasish Mridha
Okay, do not call me Aquaman. That's even worse than waterboy.
Rick Riordan
For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.
Vladimir Nabokov
Sometimes, rather than just think about it, we need to feel about it. The intellect is limited or finite, while intuition connects to a sea of unlimited consciousness that expands far beyond time and space (as we know it).
T.F. Hodge
We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.
Theodore Roosevelt
There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human being who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.
Dennis Prager
If... I focus only on what God commands for us as wives to do, it detracts nothing from God's commands for our men. His Word for them still stands.
April Cassidy
My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since I'd woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that.
Dee-Williams
Before a secret is told one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.
Susan Griffin
When the music note grows tired we will land on the wings of a guardian - One already accustomed to my attempts to fly One aware of my weakness for a beautiful try
Phibby Venable
Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.
Lev Grossman
Exceed not thy actions, but limit not thy mind.
Gary Davis
Time for a showdown with her mutinous brewmaster. She'd tried nice. She'd tried all business. She'd tried cajoling. Now, it was time to try bitch with big brass balls.
Avery Flynn
The voice is deep and soft, not a sound so much as a feeling. It is storm and wind and leaves twisting in the night. It is roots sucking deep at the earth, and the pale, sightless creatures that live below the ground. But there’s something wrong with this voice, something diseased at its core.
Sabaa Tahir
You are nothing but a reflection of your imagination. Be yourself to create a better self.
Debasish Mridha
Man has to fight for what he wants, any way he can.
Walt Morey
You make the world a better place by making daily improvements to become the best version of yourself.
Roy T. Bennett
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
Helen Keller
He considered my question for a moment and then ducked his head to kiss me. He tugged me flush up against his chest , pulling me closer than i even though possible, and then his lips touched mine.
Colleen Houck
With maps and globes decorated around your room as a child and with passport and ticket in hand in the present, it is your world to explore. To travel is to ask for a complex mix of the new and the old, hellos and goodbyes, and sadness and happiness. Leave your shoes behind at home and to walk in the footsteps of others for a while.
Forrest Curran
If we do not laugh, we will cry. Crying will only make us hotter and sweatier. We Jews like to joke about death because what you laugh at and make familiar can no longer frighten you. Besides, Chayaleh, what else is there to do?
Jane Yolen
At some point, loneliness becomes less a condition than a habit.
Jonathan Tropper
I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
Jonathan Anthony Burkett
Your first written sentence is the foundation of all of your dreams.
Rob Bignell
Ah, fish, there is no fareQuite like a flounder! They surely will not missA piece or two from stacks of sole like this;I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share.Look! the lamplight on the lane is prettyThey're back from walking out on Dover Beach.I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech,For we are in a world untouched by pityWhere ignorant humans curse the k
Henry N. Beard
The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. "Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth.""Right, like geologists.""Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle...""So, it's like oceanography or hydrology.""And the atmosphere.""Meteorology, climatology...""It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet.""How is that different from ecology or environmental science?""Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--""Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci.""Some geographers specialize in different world regions.""Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department.""They're not."(Long pause.)"So, uh, what is it that do study then?
Ken Jennings
I can't explain my feelings for him...they're strange. But he says it is why we are so much alike, why I dream of him. He calls it The Craving.
Nadège Richards
There are those whose primary ability is to spin wheels of manipulation. It is their second skin and without these spinning wheels, they simply do not know how to function. They are like toys on wheels of manipulation and control. If you remove one of the wheels, they'll never be able to feel secure, be whole.
C. JoyBell C.
Don’t let the bad leg fool you, son. If you hurt my princess, I will be the nightmare you never see coming.
C.J. Redwine
As far as I can tell, it doesn't make any difference to adults how clever children are. They always stick together. Unless you are sick or dying or mortally wounded, they will always side with the other adult.
R.L. LaFevers
There has never been upon the earth a generation of free men and women. It is not yet time to write a creed. Wait until the chains are broken—until dungeons are not regarded as temples. Wait until solemnity is not mistaken for wisdom—until mental cowardice ceases to be known as reverence. Wait until the living are considered the equals of the dead—until the cradle takes precedence of the coffin. Wait until what we know can be spoken without regard to what others may believe. Wait until teachers take the place of preachers—until followers become investigators. Wait until the world is free before you write a
Robert G. Ingersoll
Miss Leefolt sigh, hang up the phone like she just don't know how her brain gone operate without Miss Hilly coming over to push the Think buttons.
Kathryn Stockett
The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.
Erich Fromm