Quotes by American Authors - Page 873

Peace with God brings peace with each other.
Evangelist Jordan Wells
People always have such a hard time believing that robots could do bad things.
Rita Stradling
I look in the jewelry box where Joanie found the drugs. She showed me a miniature Ziploc bag filled with a clear, hard rock.“What is this?” I said. I never did drugs, so I had no idea. Heroin? Cocaine? Crack? Ice? “What is this?” I screamed at Alex, who screamed back, “It’s not like I shoot it!”A plastic ballerina pops up and slowly twirls to a tinkling song whose sound is discordant and deformed. The pink satin liner is dirty, and other than a black pearl necklace, the box holds only rusty paper clips and rubber bands noosed with Alex’s dark hair. I see a note stuck to the mirror and pick up the jewelry box and move the ballerina aside. She twirls against my finger. The note says, I wouldn’t hide them in the same place twice.I let out a short breath through my nose. Good one, Alex. I close the jewelry box and shake my head, missing her tremendously. I wish she never went back to boarding school, and I don’t understand her sudden change of plans. What did they fight about? What could have been so bad?
Kaui Hart Hemmings
My son's mother, the girl I fell in love with when I was ten, died five years ago. I expect to join her soon, at least in that. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Of that I am convinced. I thought it would be strange to live in the world without her in it. And yet. I'd gotten used to living with her memory a long time ago. Only at the very end did I see her again. I snuck into her room in the hospital and sat with her every day.
Nicole Krauss
I was surprised. I'd always associated belief in heaven with, frankly, a kind of intellectual disengagement. But Gus wasn't dumb.
John Green
If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don’t have to say anything. Be friendly and then go doyour best. That will make you special, too!
Jeff Hutchins
I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting.
J.D. Salinger
Leave your incidental Dick.
Vladimir Nabokov
(Emerson's) aphorisms tend to be chicken soup for the academic soul or gobledygook of a man who prefers the sounds of words to their meanings.
Micah Mattix
a simple question to identify your true home: where do you want to die?
Eric Weiner
Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.
Alice Sebold
Retreat? We're coming out of here as a Marine division. We're bring ... our dead. Retreat hell! We're just advancing in another direction.
General Oliver Prince Smith
In proportion as you give the state power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you.
Albert Jay Nock
The Truth is the only thing you’ll ever run into that has no agenda.
Adyashanti
It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do. And yet there are some judges dishonest and cowardly enough to solemnly decide that this is a Christian country, and that our free institutions are based upon the infamous laws of Jehovah.
Robert G. Ingersoll
Fear is the vehicle in which love can do its worst.
Phil Volatile
The truth was that if the man came with a harsh past and an emptiness in his soul, she was metal to his magnet.
Bella Andre
This music ebbs and flows, irregular, sad. It reminds me, weirdly, of watching the ocean during a bad storm, the lashing, crashing waves and the spray of sea foam against the docks; the way it takes your breath away, the power and the hugeness of it.That’s exactly what happens as I listen to the music, as I come up over the final crest of hill, and the half-ruined barn and collapsing farmhouse fan out in front of me, just as the music swells, a wave about to break: The breath leaves my body all at once, and I’m struck dumb by the beauty of it. For a second it seems to me like I really am looking down at the ocean—a sea of people, writhing and dancing in the light spilling down from the barn like shadows twisting up around a flame.
Lauren Oliver
The purpose of school should not be to prepare students for more school. We should be seeking to have fully engaged students now.
Donalyn Miller
I might love my e-reader, but I'd never pass up the chance to browse real books.
Nichole Chase
Nicholas: I know you, brother. You've been threatened with matrimonial pursuits before. Why are you really here?William: I received an invitation.Nicholas: Not from me you didn't.William: Of course not from you, brother. Parliament would go up in flames before I receive a social invitation from you.
Donna MacMeans
The author found participants in a study able to come up with more reasons to support their position but not anymore likely to change their minds based on contradictory evidence. In effect, they enlist their IQ on behalf of their instincts.
Jonathan Haidt
on the day that started it all, that rocketed me forward and landed me here, in this new body, in this new future.
Lauren Oliver
Life in the movie business is like the beginning of a new love affair: it's full of surprises, and you're constantly getting fucked.
David Mamet
Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.
John Piper
Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.
Kelly Link
Because that’s life, you know? Good and bad. You can’t have one without the other. The bad brings out the good in us, and the good can be corrupted by the bad. It’s always a struggle—to fight for the good, so it tips the scale. - Jet Phoenix
Rachael Wade
Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.
Becky Chambers
You're my story,you're my poetry,you're my floweryou're my deep driving desire.
Debasish Mridha
The city is the size of a country, but has been operated like a candy store.
Edward I. Koch
TMT, too much testosterone. Way more dangerous than TNT.
Robert L. Slater
Slowly, all the days became Saturdays, full of more sunlight than I could remember seeing in a long time.
Kristine K. Stevens
In today's romantic climate, many people are plagued by what we will call "the upgrade problem". Singles constantly wonder whether there is a better match, an upgrade.
Aziz Ansari
They’d dueled in the lamplight of her kitchen that night, savaging each other with accusations that could never be recalled. Now, he couldn’t remember half of what they’d said, only the colors and lights and seething tide of fear all around them. He could still taste the acrid burn of unfairness.
Lauren Gilley
They were heading I judged for the Sixth Precinct. Had I had the black hat with me, and sufficient men and horses and lariats and .30-30s, and popular support from the masses and a workable revolutionary ideology and/or a viable myth pattern, I would have rescued them.
Donald Barthelme
Enjoy how sweet how thoughtful how kind I'm being on your birthday. Because tomorrow it's back to the same old crap.
Melvin Helitzer
But how can one regret what, to the mind, has never existed? Even loss is an inaccurate description, for what loss is without the awareness of losing?
Nicole Krauss
The choice, as Eddie saw it, was as simple as it was brutal: get moving and keep moving or stand in one place long enough to start thinking about what all of this meant and simply die of fright.
Stephen King
We live with the scars we choose.
Shannon L. Alder
When we understand all that constitutes the cognitive unconscious, our understanding of the nature of consciousness is vastly enlarged. Consciousness goes way beyond mere awareness of something, beyond the mere experience of qualia, beyond the awareness that you are aware, and beyond the multiple takes on immediate experience provided by various centers of the brain. Consciousness certainly involves all of the above plus the immeasurably vaster constitutive framework provided by the cognitive unconscious, which must be operating for us to be aware of anything at all.
George Lakoff
Perhaps the breaking of the human spirit into submissive, thoughtless robots is the most terrible feature of Stalin’s Russia. Humanity is bowed down. Every one cringes before his superiors, and those who abase themselves seek outlets in bullying and terrifying the unfortunates beneath them. Integrity, courage and charity disappear in the stifling atmosphere of cant, falsehood and terror.
Freda Utley
King die hard, in Shakespeare and in life.
Harold Bloom
Several themes describe misconceptions about mental illness and corresponding stigmatizing attitudes. Media analyses of film and print have identified three: people with mental illness are homicidal maniacs who need to be feared; they have childlike perceptions of the world that should be marveled; or they are responsible for their illness because they have weak character (29-32)."World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illnessPATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON
Patrick W. Corrigan
Those who do not think that employment is systemic slavery are either blind or employed.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
you cannot find happiness, outside the plan of happiness!
John Bytheway
I must freeze my heart to the one person who insists on setting it ablaze.
Victoria Aveyard
As mortal humans we are born with a death sentence anyway, so what difference does a little poison make? Why not take a chance you will survive the ordeal and make something significant of your life?..." p330
Brian Herbert
The men were smashing windows and aiming their weapons through them. The driver had opened the door and was shouting for the women and children to get out and run and hide. But Ilina realized in some vague way that he never managed to actually say the word "hide." He really said, "Women and children, get out, get out, get out! Run and..." The clerk's wife thought it was odd that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence, and even stranger that she herself knew the word, heard the word "hide" in her head when the driver stopped talking.
Clark Zlotchew
I don't only act out of my character; my character reacts to my actions. Each time I why, even if I'm not caught, I become a little bit more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valenced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are.
Rebecca Goldstein
By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge the sun seemed to move from a cheerful daytime yellow to an early-evening gold; painful how the gold light hit the riverbanks, rich and sorrowful, drawing from Amy some longing, a craving for joy.
Elizabeth Strout
If you have kindness in your heart, you offer acts of kindness to touch the hearts of others wherever you go—whether they are random or planned. Kindness becomes a way of life.
Roy T. Bennett
He's holding my hand! A boy is holding my hand! This is happening! I should let go. I should blush and act shy. Like a girl from the movies. But that's not what I do. I hold on.
G. Willow Wilson
But there is one cool thingabout having a weirdo mother.She works so hard at rememberingwhere she left herselfshe doesn’t have timeto work on me.
Linda Vigen Phillips
We’ve had bad luck with our kids – they’ve all grown up.
Christopher Morley
Dreams do come true for those who dare to believe in themselves.
Bryant McGill
The truth is that circumstances had done much to cultivate in Mrs. Tristram a marked tendency to irony. Her taste on many points differed from that of her husband, and though she made frequent concessions it must be confessed that her concessions were not always graceful. They were founded upon a vague project she had of some day doing something very positive, something a trifle passionate. What she meant to do she could by no means have told you; but meanwhile, nevertheless, she was buying a good conscience, by installments.
Henry James
What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.
Christopher Hitchens
He kissed her, and the magic that had been building up steadily around them exploded, raining down in arcs of silver fire that made her half-remember a prophecy from her d
Nenia Campbell
I have studied many timesThe marble which was chiseled for me—A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.In truth it pictures not my destinationBut my life.For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.And now I know that we must lift the sailAnd catch the winds of destinyWherever they drive the boat.To put meaning in one’s life may end in madness,But life without meaning is the tortureOf restlessness and vague desire—It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
Edgar Lee Masters
Anyone who engages in the practice of psychotherapy confronts every day the devastation wrought by the teachings of religion.
Nathaniel Branden