Quotes by American Authors - Page 862

We earn the respect of our peers by laboring to quell our critics’ justified disapproval. We earn self-respectability by schooling the wisdom to ignore unfair condemnation. We learn goodness by witnessing other person’s lives and by performing unsolicited acts of kindnesses.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.
Man Ray
You can learn a lot from your lovers, but-for the most part-you get to keep your friends longer, and you learn more from them.
John Irving
Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it’s an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.Simply put, I’m in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky.
Chila Woychik
The greatest masterpieces were once only pigments on a palette.
Henry S. Haskins
Life can’t be divided into chapters...only minutes. The events of your life are all crammed together one minute right after the other without any time lapses or blank pages or chapter breaks because no matter what happens life just keeps going and moving forward and words keep flowing and truths keep spewing whether you like it or not and life never lets you pause and just catch your fucking breath.I need one of those chapter breaks. I just want to catch my breath, but I have no idea how.
Colleen Hoover
His lines had been honed over centuries, passed down through generations, for poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same, and they had no option but to beg for mercy.
Kiran Desai
Believe it or not working in libraries is very similar to working on an ambulance or a fire truck. You take care of a lot of homeless people, you sometimes have to clean up things that require latex gloves, you always wear comfortable shoes, and you put out a lot of “fires”!
Lori Reed
I missed you more now than I had when I lost you. I was forgetting the bad things faster than I forgot the good, and the changing ratio felt a little bit like falling in love even though I was actually speaking to you less and less.
Alexandra Kleeman
Killing is for those with a sick mind.
Kayla Krantz
It's one thing to think you're worthless, and quite another for somebody else to tell you that you are.
Jennifer Echols
In the loss of skill, we lose stewardship; in losing stewardship we lose fellowship; we become outcasts from the great neighborhood of Creation. It is possible - as our experience in this good land shows - to exile ourselves from Creation, and to ally ourselves with the principle of destruction - which is, ultimately, the principle of nonentity. It is to be willing in general for being to not-be. And once we have allied ourselves with that principle, we are foolish to think that we can control the results. (pg. 303, The Gift of Good Land)
Wendell Berry
I took a part-time editing job to pay the rent. It was work I could do at home, but when suddenly I was expected to spend two days a week in the office, I quit, bought an ice cream cone, and walked the sunny streets of Manhattan.
Gloria Steinem
I could imagine a hot day. I could imagine a number of curious people spontaneously following a young man of great wisdom, a young man rumored to wield power over the mysterious afflictions they saw every day in their villages. They are not sure where they are going, and once the young man stops to speak, they find themselves on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, the nearest town now very far away. Many are feeling hunger pangs, uncertain of why they have come so far. What will they do? One of the young man's friends arrives, unexpectedly bearing food. The people are happy and relieved, and among them talk circulates of the surprising tenderness with which the wise young man hands out victuals to the people, few of whom he knows well.Eventually, the story is written down. Years go by, then decades, and in this time the crowd increases from fifty to five hundred to five thousand. The unexpected arrival of the follower bearing food vanishes from the telling. An event experienced by its participants in miraculous terms is transformed into a miraculous story. The core of the story remains the same: the hungry were fed when they were not expecting to be, and the young man who fed them do so of his own volition. You could base a code of ethics on a single act of unexpected munificence, and perhaps even fashion from it a crude if supple morality, but you would not have a cosmology, or anything close to one, and cosmologies were what most people craved.
Tom Bissell
I wear my wrinkles like battle scars, having earned every last one slaying life’s dragons. They boast of my victories and some defeats while their beauty is a wealth of wisdom gained.
Richelle E. Goodrich
And you out there: Aren’t you somehow right here with me?
Garth Risk Hallberg
Life itself is the most precious gift to me, for that I am perpetually indebted.
Debasish Mridha
But germs are the most common snowflake starters and lie at the heart of 85 percent of all flakes.2So next time you gaze at a lovely snowstorm, inform your favorite germophobe or hypochondriac that living bacteria sit shivering in most of those untold billions of flakes. Then hand him or her a snow cone or organize a catch-a-snowflake-on-your-tongue party.Once the ice-forming process is started, more molecules join the party, and the crystal grows. It can ultimately become either a snowflake or a rough granule of ice called by the odd name graupel. A snowflake contains ten quintillion water molecules. That’s ten million trillion. Ten snowflakes—which can fit on your thumb tip—have the same number of molecules as there are grains of sand on the earth. Or stars in the visible universe. How many flakes, how many molecules fashioned the snowy landscape I was observing as I drove east? It numbed the brain.
Bob Berman
Jimi on the box, thirty stories up, everything immediate, yet distanced. Jimi's chords locked in aerial dogfights, gliding, riding, sliding, hiding, belligerent bursts, hallucinogenic, a head-warping face-wiping mind melt, chords live dive bombers screaming in for the kill, scintillating, serrated chords shot through with arc-light shrieks of staccato mayhem, as immediate and horrific as the firefight racketing away this very second below our red and puffy eyes; chords that hang in the air like the retinal reflection of an eerie afterburn, the stars displaced and the smell of a world that burned. Overhead, night birds flying, Huey, Apache, Chinook, whooshing with murderous potential. And over everything - every apocalyptic bang, boom, and rattle - Jimi, bleating like Braxton and bonding with the bombast.
Roger Steffens
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities without your help.
Judith Martin
Love suffers long and is kind. Love does not parade itself, is not arrogant or rude, does not seek its own, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Stephanie Thornton
When we are kind to animals, they become loving and kind to us. It is our sacred duty to love the creator and the creations.
Debasish Mridha
It is always some consolation in sorrow to feel that it is shared, and any burden laid on several is carried more lightly or removed.
Heloise
Inelegantly, and without my consent, time passed.
Miranda July
In 2012, an estimated 14,827 persons were murdered in the United States.-- Federal Bureau of Investigation
Gennaro F. Vito
It's better to have no control and be in the center of God's plan for your life than have total control and be completely lost to your destiny.
Alisa Hope Wagner
Thomas slammed his fist on the table, sending eating utensils flying. “Shameful! It is downright shameful that so-called men of God would use religion to manipulate people.”--from Prairie Grace when Thomas learns how the Indian agents and others are stealing from Native Americans
Marilyn Bay Wentz
The playboy is not necessarily a man who has many girlfriends, or a man who has many women, or a man who has slept with many women. That is old. But there is a new breed of the playboy and he is the man who remains single in attempts to make every woman feel as if he belongs to her, he remains a virgin in order to make every woman feel like she will be the first one, and in the end he may choose a very unattractive woman to adorn his side, so that in all circumstances, he will shine as the more beautiful one. This is the new breed of playboy. And it is a very evil one.
C. JoyBell C.
The fact that God is sovereign over the distribution of gifts (1 Cor. 12:7) is no reason not to seek the gifts. God is sovereign over our food too, but though he desires to provide it for his children (see Matt. 6:25–34) and wants us to seek his kingdom first (Matt. 6:9–10, 33), he expects us to pray for him to provide our food (Matt. 6:11; 7:7–11).
Craig S. Keener
When a president's popularity grows, the he is doing wrong things.
Debasish Mridha
Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something we do only in comparison to others.
Eric Greitens
To ‘stop and smell the roses’ we must first believe that there’s a rose garden out there somewhere. And in this jaded world of ours, the refusal to believe in gardens leaves most of us ref of roses.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
It saddened me that sometimes shopping was far more perilous than dealing with zombies and vampires.
Anton Strout
Maybe if she'd invited him into the forest all those years ago, things would have ended differently. But she doubted it. Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go.And no one could pry you free of it.
Carrie Ryan
What fire joins none man can put aside,
George R.R. Martin
Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kiss me good."Jordan went on tiptoe and kissed him with everything she had. His mouth mashed against hers just as greedily, tongues tangling, hearts beating wildly against each other. The embrace of his arms tightened, and he lifted her. She didn't need a stupid floor with him near. Together they could fly."Bow chicks wow wow," said another voice.
Erin Kellison
Sophie and Agatha locked eyes one last time but neither screamed for the other.Once true loves, the two girls now pulled apart like strangers, each in the arms of a boy, Good with Good, Evil with Evil...Both of their wishes granted.
Soman Chainani
Don't think that just because you made it to the next level that the haters and naysayers disappear. Remember, new levels bring new devils.
Steve Maraboli
The happiest people are the ones who can build a firm foundation of awesomeness out of the stones people have thrown at them.
Tanya Masse
Rereading, we find a new book
Mason Cooley
You might think that, by now, people would have become accustomed to the idea of natural catastrophes. We live on a planet that is still cooling and which has fissures and faults in its crust; this much is accepted even by those who think that the globe is only six thousand years old, as well as by those who believe that the earth was "designed" to be this way. Even in such a case, it is to be expected that earthquakes will occur and that, if they occur under the seabed, tidal waves will occur also. Yet two sorts of error are still absolutely commonplace. The first of these is the idiotic belief that seismic events are somehow "timed" to express the will of God. Thus, reasoning back from the effect, people will seriously attempt to guess what sin or which profanity led to the verdict of the tectonic plates. The second error, common even among humanists, is to borrow the same fallacy for satirical purposes and to employ it to disprove a benign deity.
Christopher Hitchens
If Money Is Everything Then We Mean Nothing
Ron Riccota
It’s not complicated and it doesn’t compare to my problem, now give me a damn cookie I think I earned it,” Jill snapped.Chris grinned like it was Christmas morning. “Yes, you did.” He brought her a cookie. “Very good, my young one. You’ve made Chris very happy with this little tidbit of information.
R.L. Mathewson
Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy.
Robert Anthony
Patience is an action and a skill to be cultivated. It actually solves more problems that most other actions.
John Bruna
A bullet fired level from a gun will hit ground at same time as a bullet dropped from the same height. Do the Physics.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
She was clothed entirely in two large swatches of leather, the leather fake and shiny in a self-mocking way, absolutely correct for 1993, the first year when mocking the mainstream had become the mainstream.
Gary Shteyngart
Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning.
Mitch Albom
There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge and wisdom, A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.
Rachel Caine
How exquisitely human was the wish for permanent happiness, and how thin human imagination became trying to achieve it.
Toni Morrison
Questers of the truth, that’s who dogs are; seekers after the invisible scent of another being’s authentic core.
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Crossover' is a word scientists use to describe dolphins' soaring over seas, their traveling so free and fast, so high-spirited and almost effervescent that their sleek bodies barely skim the waves. The suggestion of splashes from tail and pectoral leaves a luminous wake across the water. For these crossover miles, the dolphins, like their human terrestrial mammal kin, belong more to the element of air than the sea....Held in [the dolphins'] fluid embrace, I pulled my arms close against my sides and our communal speed increased... Racing around the lagoon, I opened my eyes again to see nothing but an emerald underwater blur. And then I remembered what I had either forgotten long ago or never quite fully realized. This feeling of being carried along by other animals was fam
Brenda Peterson
Which sort of shows why my body is an idiot, because forced narcolepsy is pretty much the worst defense ever.
Jenny Lawson
The enemy," retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, "is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes Colonel Cathcart. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live.
Joseph Heller
Whatever your difficulty, whatever your hardship in life: Dance and make the song you sing your prayer. Sing it courageously, and with each step strengthen yourself with the knowledge and wisdom of your elders, so that whatever next happens, you can survive and not lose your rhythm.
Red Haircrow
This story didn't end in fireworks, because the truth is, fireworks are something from my twenties. I could have made fireworks, but I chose to make a nuanced memory of a person who is neither a hero nor a villain in my life.
Mindy Kaling
The body often contains emotional truths that words can too easily gloss over.
Esther Perel
I am so much happier when I am doing the things that make me me, and that's living by my standards and doing the things I love, using my talents, however random they are, to share with other people. That's what makes me happy.
Lindsey Stirling
Our present idea of freedom is only the freedom to do as we please: to sell ourselves for a high salary, a home in the suburbs, and idle weekends. But that is a freedom dependent upon affluence, which is in turn dependent upon the rapid consumption of exhaustible supplies. The other kind of freedom is the freedom to take care of ourselves and of each other. The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.
Wendell Berry