Quotes by American Authors - Page 85

A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.
Ron Suskind
New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.
Henry Miller
Big decisions in my life have always come easy and are made without hesitation. It is easier for me to make a life-changing decision than to decide what to get for dessert.
Tony Hawk
Now I wonder if it means that the future is a place, or like a place, that I could go to; that is go to in some way other than just getting older.
Audrey Niffenegger
This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.
Antonin Scalia
Ironically, this physically weak feeling signifies that I’m actually getting stronger. I know from my past that I will ultimately feel strong if I just sit with the feeling and experience it.
Jenni Schaefer
My heart is full and my weapon is clean.
Jason Christopher Hartley
I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?
Ursula K Le Guin
Free men can easily become enslaved, if they let others do their thinking and talking, instead of using their own heads.
Richard Puz
In love there are two things - bodies and words.
Joyce Carol Oates
Thoughts of being a pirate and stealing her away to my ship race across my mind. Although I’m not a pirate, and she’s not my captured princess.
Simone Elkeles
Peace can't be seen with eyes, only the mind can see it and the heart can feel it. So open the window of your mind to let it come in.
Debasish Mridha
So I’m your huntress and thief?” His hands slid down to cup the backs of my knees as he said with a roguish grin, “You are my salvation, Feyre.
Sarah J Maas
In fact, there is nothing so easily remade as our definitions of ourselves.
Dinaw Mengestu
I don't recognize her. This is not the woman I knew so round and made-up with her hair always a wavy jet black! I stay back until she opens her arms to me - this strange and familiar woman - her voice hoarse, "¡Ay mi'jita!" Instinctively, I run into her arms, still holding back my insides. "Don't cry. Don't cry", I remember. "Whatever you do, no llores." But my tía had not warned me about the smell, the unmistakable smell of the woman, mi mamá, el olor de aceite y jabón and comfort and home. "Mi mamá." And when I catch the smell I am lost in tears, deep long tears that come when you have held your breath for centuries.
Cherríe L. Moraga
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.
Joseph Heller
Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear.
Suzy Kassem
Fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The deflation, or flattening out, of values in Modern art does not necessarily indicate an ethical nihilism. Quite the contrary; in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of existence, art may lead us to a more complete and less artificial celebration of the world.
William Barrett
Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment. I wasn't ready for that moment to end.
Ellen Hopkins
Any path is only a path and there is no affront to oneself or to others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.
Carlos Castañeda
Faith is the virtue of the storm, just as happiness is the virtue of sunshine.
Ruth Fulton Benedict
I read things that male relationship experts write about women and I read things that female relationship experts write about men, then I feel a true sadness in my heart. Why can’t there be a simple, pure, direct openness? Why can’t there be a simple, real, open trust? The truth is that male or female, gay or straight— we are all people— we have all been broken and put back together in so many different ways... it’s really just about learning how to recognize the sound of the other one's cracks. And that’s what it’s really about, just that.
C. JoyBell C.
You are brave and loyal and true. You have such a good heart." He held my hand close to his chest and covered it with his other hand. "It is only afraid. But I would take such good care of it, love, if you would give it to me.
Julianne Donaldson
If darkness was meant to rule it wouldn’t be chased away by the Light.” -Sheelagh
Brittany L. Engels
Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy - all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values.
Milton Friedman
Tell me that the purpose of life is to have fun, and without a care in the world I'll begin wreaking havoc on everything I pass. Now that's what I call pure, honest fun.
Criss Jami
It is laughable how often good manners interfere with my survival.
Andrew Levkoff
Cooking is not a science but an art, mistakes are okay, messes are fine—the pleasure is in the creating and the sharing of the result.
Lori Pollan
It is no surprise that the first and always unwelcome message of male initiation rites is LIFE – IS – HARD.
Richard Rohr
It wouldn’t be long until I made my declaration. I didn’t just need my position to be clear, I needed to blind Whitney with blazing fireballs of glory. Real hardcore knock-em-down shit.
Rachael Wade
You shouldn’t be placing hope in our lives, Parvin. That’s my point. I don’t know the answers of the future, but your confidence and hope need to be in God.
Nadine Brandes
Disruption isn't about what happens to you, it's about how you respond to what happens to you.
Jay Samit
There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind.
Teju Cole
Imitation is human intelligence in its most dynamic aspect.
René Girard
It doesn't take two minutes on an examining table for a girl to know that abortion is painful and destructive and it'll have far-reaching effects on her life. Besides the emotional trauma of going through something so violent, there are the physical aspects, the aftereffects. Unfortunately, by the time she's gone that far, it's too late to change her mind.
Francine Rivers
I was born modest not all over but in spots.
Mark Twain
Are you in a suit?' I managed at last, my voice choking up. 'You didn’t have to dress up for me.''Quiet, Sage,' he said. 'I’ll make the hilarious one-liners during this daring rescue.
Richelle Mead
It's probably a merciful thing that pain is impossible to describe from memory
Christopher Hitchens
Traumatic experiences in early childhood may interfere with the child's ability to securely attach.
Asa Don Brown
As I grow ever closer to the end of my time, I look back at this life and tell you that the only thing I would wish to give up is the regret I've carried in my heart for all these years. At long last I have come to realize the things I once counted as regrets were indeed blessings that I was too blind to see.
Bette Lee Crosby
It is not easy to explain why God permits evil; but it is impossible for an atheist to explain the existence of goodness. How could a spiritless, soul-less, cross-less, Godless universe become the center of faith, purity, sacrifice, and martyrdom? How can decency be the decent thing if there is no God? Since God is love, why should we be surprised that want of it should end in pain, hate, broken hearts, and war?
Fulton J. Sheen
I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.
Steve Erickson
Yeah, Hera was definitely channelling her inner Wicked Witch of the West that day.
Rick Riordan
Every step gets him closer to greatness...or disaster.
Jody Feldman
It is true that the church must be in many places and with many people, but it is the poor who will reveal to the church—dramatically and poignantly—the nature of its heart and mission.
Gary Smith
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.
Walt Whitman
Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that.
Ann Brashares
In Tsurani culture, forgiveness was simply a less shameful form of weakness than capitulation.
Raymond E. Feist
There's no substitute for imagination, but creativity is only enhanced when forged with life experience.
John Ridley
I feel that the care of libraries and the use of books, and the knowledge of books, is a tremendously vital thing, and that we who deal with books and who love books have a great opportunity to bring about something in this country which is more vital here than anywhere else, because we have the chance to make a democracy that will be a real democracy.
Eleanor Roosevelt
My dreams are worthless, my plans are dust, my goals are impossible.All are of no value unless they are followed by action.
Og Mandino
...you're dazzling. I'm dazzled, I'm upside down and inside out and...God, Vivian. I don't know what to say. There aren't words. I just want to crawl back under the blanket and spend my life doing that with you. And everything else we did today.
Beatriz Williams
Ars moriendi ars vivendi est: the art of dying is the art of living.
Robert Charles Wilson
To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self disciplined is to follow in a better way.
Corita Kent
I just wish moments weren’t so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering. 'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard.
Roman Payne
I needed something else, some kind of juice.He gave me a hooked-eyebrow glance and took a showy swig of the water. Mmm, he said, smacking his lips. Water-juice. It's fantastic.
Norman Ollestad
Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody.
J.D. Salinger
It doesn't make you a monster to want, she said, her voice very gentle. It's what you do with it that matters.
Jim Butcher
You can turn off the sun, but im still ganna shine!
Jason Mraz