Quotes by American Authors - Page 80

Mindfulness is that space where you are in touch with life-experience and you are brightly aware.
Bryant McGill
To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Ever since, New York has existed for me simultaneously as a map to be learned and a place to aspire too--a city of things and a city of signs, the place I actually am and the place I would like to be even when I am here. As a kid, I grasped that the skyline was a sign that could be, so to speak, relocated to New Jersey--a kind of abstract, receding Vision whose meaning would always be "out of reach," not a concrete thing signifying "here you are." Even when we are established here, New York still seems a place we aspire to. Its life is one thing--streets and hot dogs and brusqueness--and its symbols, the lights across the way, the beckoning skyline, are another. We go on being inspired even when we're most exasperated.
Adam Gopnik
Everything happens for a reason.
Ransom Riggs
She tossed her towel on her dresser and turned to the bed where shed left her PJs. Only it wasn't just her PJs on the bed anymore. Lucas, eyes wide, sat on the foot of her bed, about four feet from where she stood completely naked. She squealed. He laughed. She dashed for the towel. Once she had it around her, she glared from a still grinning Lucas to the door. "I'm killing Della!" He laughed again. "I'm afraid I might have to protect her for this one.
C.C. Hunter
When we oppose oppression, we lift our hands from the collective reins that empower such oppression.
Bryant McGill
Hope is not a strategy
Colin Powell
I appreciate the beauty and balm of flowers but I have never enjoyed receiving them because then I have to watch them die, and worse...throw them away.
Donna Lynn Hope
A theology that cannot be sung is not worth having.... Authentic Christian faith is not merely believed. Nor is it merely acted upon. It is sung - with utter joy sometimes, in uncontrollable tears sometimes, but it is sung.
Reggie M. Kidd
The world was in terrible shape, and I'm glad we stood up and said what we believed; but a lot of the time we'd say these beautiful things about justice and fairness and equality, but we weren't so nice to each other. We'd be jealous and we'd gossip, and we'd be moody and difficult and rude and inconsiderate. Why do I say 'we'? I mean I would be all that-- and if at the time I ever came near to knowing what I'd become, I'd dodge, I'd duck, I'd go on the offensive: the terrible Wall Street bankers. Lots of them were terrible-- and so were lots of us.
Dorothy Day
Government should do a few things, and do them right
George W. Bush
What right do we have to dream of another world, if we can't take care of this one.
George A. Gomez
Once you get off the bandwagon of believing that truth is your enemy and is bad news with all kinds of associated unhappy obligations, you can then afford to take it on with some enthusiasm and start to have some fun with it. You can begin to trust yourself and play with mystery and big questions without the need for a crutch of an answer to lean on and sell to others (“Here you go, this crutch worked for me.”). And you then begin to see these big words, like imagination, fearlessness and truth as signposts to more fun, instead of the reverse as you do now. To start the engine, just follow what you yearn for, make a contract with that which compels you, and fulfill the trust of that contract through choice and action.
Darrell Calkins
I felt myself begin to slide down into that recognizable abyss, down and down, where I knew it would be cold and dark, but which had become more familiar to me than my face in the mirror. I knew I should instead be grateful for this time with my two best friends, for having laughed, but I let myself slide anyway. And hoped someone would pull me back up.
Tracy H. Tucker
There's something about a cowboy...
Kathleen Ball
I would more appropriately define mastery as the technical ability possible within the constraints of your particular existence.
Chris Matakas
I would wish this book could take the form of a plea for everlasting peace, a plea from one who knows... Or it would be fine to confirm the odd beliefs about war: it's horrible, but it's a crucible of men and events and, in the end, it makes more of a man out of you.But, still, none of these notions seems right. Men are killed, dead human beings are heavy and awkward to carry, things smell different in Vietnam, soldiers are afraid and often brave, drill sergeants are boors, some men think the war is proper and just and others don't and most don't care. Is that the stuff for a morality lesson, even for a theme?Do dreams offer lessons? Do nightmares have themes, do we awaken and analyze them and live our lives and advise others as a result? Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.
Tim O'Brien
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on.
Robert Bloch
I hated the place, Tommy. I hated every second of every day. And it was all … your … fault!
James Dashner
And what hypocrisy it is on the part of our Government to have the Bible in our courts of law for the culprit to take his oath upon and then be tried for the very crimes which the Bible itself sanctions.
Joseph Lewis
Where is the best place to hide a penny? It is in a jar of pennies.
Richard Paul Evans
But beautiful girl above all beautiful girls,' he wrote back, 'This is my home.
Junot Díaz
People tend to be more tofu-like, able to absorb whatever environment they're dropped into. But where does the adaptability end and your actual personality begin?
Sloane Crosley
We see anything actionable, we don’t react to it. We consider it.
Bryan Larrick
Repetition draws us into music, and repetition draws music into us.
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
The determination that is his biggest strength . . . is also at times his fatal flaw. Like an unthinking machine, he'll just keep shoving, not realizing a step back, a one-night pause, could let some obstacle move out of the way and smooth his path.
Lin Pardey
When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.
John Muir
Social Media brands faster than any other existing Marketing plan and for much cheaper!
Germany Kent
The first secret of success: Believe in Yourself. Nothing changes in your life until you believe you can do things that are important to you. And if you have a low opinion of yourself, nobody else is likely to raise it.
Steve Goodier
We must have public officials who will stand up and tell the people exactly what they think... Our failure in recent years has not been the failure of the people to meet the challenges placed before them, but rather the failure of both our great political parties to place those challenges honestly and courageously before the people, and to trust the willingness of the people to do the things that really need to be done.
Joe Biden
You kill one, there was another in his place, and what's worse, his nephew now hated you, his friend now hated you. . . . There was no end.
Juliana Barbassa
I’m interested in connecting with readers and strangers through poetry. I want to create real intimacy with my poems. Whether I do that through pulling from my personal life or using my fantasy life—or say history, whether that history is personal history or our collective histories—what’s important is that an experience is created. An experience that will hopefully matter to people and feel real. I want my poems to move people and make them want to live their lives, however complicated and impossible those lives may be. I think a poem can speak to the life you currently live but also to the lives you’ve lived before, the ones to come and also those you’ve yet to imagine. What else can do that? Not sex or money or other people.
Alex Dimitrov
It’s more eerie to be alone in a city that’s lit up and functioning than one that’s a tomb. If everything were silent, one could almost pretend to be in nature. A forest. A meadow. Crickets and birdsong. But the corpse of civilization is as restless as the creatures that now roam the graveyards.
Isaac Marion
Aim for truth, and beauty will follow. Aim for beauty, and truth will not necessarily follow.
Chuck Wachtel
It commenced raining one day and did not stop for two months. We went through ever different kind of rain they is, cep'n maybe sleet or hail. It was little tiny stinging rain sometimes, an big ole fat rain at others. It came sidewise an straight down an sometimes even seem to stand up from the ground. Nevertheless, we was expected to do our shit, which was mainly walking upland down the hills an stuff looking for gooks.
Winston Groom
The most preposterous notion that Homo sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all history.
Robert A. Heinlein
You sought to preserve your creative instincts and what would nourish them. But neurosis itself does not nourish the artist, you know; he creates in spite of it, out of anything, any material given to him. The torments and hells of [crazy men], are not for you.
Anaïs Nin
Education is no substitute for intelligence. That elusive quality is defined only in part by puzzle-solving ability. It is in the creation of new puzzles reflecting what your senses report that you round out the definition.
Frank Herbert
Time can be a greedy thing-sometimes it steals the details for itself.
Khaled Hosseini
They’re like chocolate-chip cookies, though. Can’t have just one.
Steve Berry
I always sense the future, the antithesis of everything is always before my eyes. I have never seen a child without thinking that it would grow old, nor a cradle without thinking of a grave. The sight of a naked woman makes me imagine her skeleton.
Paul Auster
Apparently, the world is not a wish-granting factory.
John Green
Ah, yes. That. The sin of being happy or excited. According to my father, we must guard carefully against such things. According to my father, these emotions are the equivalent of dancing on out fifth-floor window ledge. Clearly inviting a nasty fall.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
It's so hard to believe in anything anymore. I mean, it's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, because it seems so mythological, it seems so arbitrary...but, on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. I guess I wouldn't believe in anything anymore if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.
Steve Martin
We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.
Maya Angelou
You mean other than the wings? I once ate nine snicker bars in a row without barfing. It was a record.
James Patterson
Old times never come back and I suppose it's just as well. What comes back is a new morning every day in the year and that's better.
George E. Woodberry
Anything worth having doesn’t come easy' is a perception of negativity perpetuated by misery looking for company. Accept nothing but the opposite of this intention and soon your life will navigate away from perpetual negative thinking and outcomes to the endless positive quality of life that exists for all of us
Gary Hopkins
She came awake, stomach rumbling, and opened her eyes to see a plate being held right under her nose. When she reached for it, Shane snatched it back. 'Nuh-uh. Mine.''Share!' she demanded.'Man, you are one grabby girlfriend.'She grinned. It always made her feel so fiercly warm inside to hear him say that- the girlfriend part, not the grabby part. 'If you love me, you'll give me a taco.''Seriously? That's all you got? What about you'll do sexy, illegal things to me for a taco?''Not for a taco,' she said. 'I'm not cheap.''They're brisket tacos.''Now you're talking.
Rachel Caine
I love and enjoy every moment. Is there anything more beautiful that I could do with that moment?
Debasish Mridha
Spoken words have power beyond measure.
Debasish Mridha
The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Men are allowed to have passion and commitment for their work ... a woman is allowed that feeling for a man, but not her work.
Barbra Streisand
I couldn’t fight the tide, so Idecided to float along.
David Levithan
I'm fine," she said. "I'm just hiding from the Queen General and her latest poster boy.""The Queen General?" Which one of his sisters fit that description?More like which one didn't."Queen General Marilyn," his visitor said. "Supreme ruler of Bliss and chairperson of Knot Festival."The words 'Knot Festival' twisted CJ's stomach, and the room seemed to climb ten degrees hotter. He tugged at his bow tie. The woman kept talking...Marilyn rewrote the Golden Husband Games rules so her Exalted Widower is eligible to be named Husband of the Half Century. And you know what? He's the reason my husband left me.
Jamie Farrell
Welcome Beauty, banish fear.
Francesca Lia Block
The story I'm writing finds its own voice while I'm writing it.
Holly Lisle
Just as you can’t rehearse your way to success, you can’t design your way there either.
Dale Ludwig
Courageous people know that old ways of doing things shouldn’t stand in the way of a better solution.
Frank Sonnenberg
Please tell me this is easier to take off than it was to put on.”Calla raised a brow. “You do not think Master Kell knows how?
V.E. Schwab