Quotes by Authors - Page 2741

Most true things are kind of corny, don’t you think? But we make them more sophisticated out of sheer embarrassment.

Each piece of glass is another piece of myself I gave to him. It's too bad I didn't keep any pieces for myself.

New hope, new dreams.

He’d valued his dignity more than his own life.

Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.

The void can only be filled with love.

Wasn't growing catnip in one's yard the kitty equivalent of giving candy to children?

I had no friends. Was I happy? I was wildly happy. Sitting on my bed, which took up most of the space in that narrow room, I whispered prayers of thanks that I was really and truly here in New York, beginning another life. I worshipped the place. I feasted on every beautiful inch of it - the crowds, the fruit and vegetable stands, the miles of pavement, the graffiti, even the garbage. All of it sent me into paroxysms of joy. Needless to say, my elevation had an irrational cast to it. Had I not arrived laden with ideas of urban paradise, I might have felt bad losing sleep, might have felt lonely and disoriented, but instead I walked around town like a love-struck idiot, inhaling the difference between there and here.

Belief in God puts our life on autopilot. We know that someone up there is watching us and is in control. Losing our faith puts off the autopilot, we have to run it manually, and check if everything is alright for ourselves. No wonder religion has a wide appeal; most of us are lazy and would like a supreme being to be in charge

Whether you like it or not, you are branding yourself. The concern is whether the brand is a positive one or not. It is therefore expected of every aspiring achiever who wants to make an indelible impact to first of all create and maintain a good brand.

Life is like a box of chocolates: You get through what little actual good stuff there is right away, then you constantly fool yourself into believing there's still something good in whatever's left.

I realized how hard it that must have been, how much hurt when you know the only way to help someone is to give him distance. So I let him go.

Isn't it amazing that we’ll cause ourselves more pain by thinking about, and avoiding something we’re afraid of, or something we know we must deal with, but don't want to face? The best thing you can do is just do it, just face the fear and get it over with. How do you get the courage? You create your courage by just taking action…

Life consists of many different stories. A person has not just one but countless life stories that weave in between each other and together create exactly that specific life and that specific human being.

If you can see yourself as an artist, and you can see that your life is your own creation, then why not create the most beautiful story for yourself?

Who knew Demon Child would have such a normal name? I expected something exotic like Serena or Destiny or the Evil One That Comes in the Night to Make Us Chilly.

[T]he real lie that advertising tells is not so much in what it shows, but in what it leaves out.

And yet Curt’s a real writer too. His machinery is stuck, that’s all.

Letting people be okay without us is how we get to be okay without them.

In life we come across people who ditch us, break us. But we still continue to trust. We are scared of getting hurt again but we still trust, still share and still open our hearts to them. Why? Why do we trust even after knowing that people change?

Father Sams, a mirthful shaman, looked at a nighted photograph of actress Lar Park Lincoln beneath his glass of bourbon con hielo.

What happens slowly carries in each part the possibility of returning to what came before. In an accident everything is simultaneous, sudden, irreversible. It means this: no going back.

The architect of popular culture is none other than Satan. He is the chief designer and chief marketer, and he has been branding worldliness since the beginning of time. His methods are shifty and constantly in motion, changing fads and trends to keep the world running in circles, trying to keep up with the latest and greatest.

If only [there] really was a door and [you] could walk through it into another life, where threads didn't snarl and stitches didn't go all tight and tiny. Where people loved you and didn't leave you for someone else.

Love yourself and the beauty of your uniqueness.

There are hundred reasons to worry but the only way to keep out of this 'net' of worry is to pray.

When he said someone had 'died", Erdős meant that that the person had stopped doing mathematics. When he said someone had "left", the person had died.

Sometimes one awakes with the knowledge that unrecallable dreams have been lining your sleep, and though you feel rested, it is the rest of one who has lived for hours in an alternate world, another realm.

To understand what makes you future strong, and what being strong means, is to understand how and why you make choices.

Sociologists argue that in contemporary Western society the marketplace has become so dominant that the consumer model increasingly characterizes most relationships that historically were covenantal, including marriage. Today we stay connected to people only as long as they are meeting our particular needs at an acceptable cost to us. When we cease to make a profit - that is, when the relationship appears to require more love and affirmation from us than we are getting back - then we "cut our loses" and drop the relationship. This has also been called "commodification," a process by which social relationships are reduced to economic exchange relationships, and so the very idea of "covenant" is disappearing in our culture. Covenant is therefore a concept increasingly foreign to us, and yet the Bible says it is the essence of marriage.

She slept deeply, but as usual, she did not dream. It had been months; none of them was dreaming anymore. [p. 227]

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.

I often ask myself, 'Who would Jesus vote for?' Then I start to think that he wouldn't vote at all; however, it would not be out of apathy or disinterest, but out of perfection and light. As a miracle worker, I think he would, by the power of God's teachings, the perseverance and the truth, influence in a modern sense whoever is put into office how to best serve his fellow men. One, like his skeptics, may find that impractical. But there is a message in that no man in power can slow the momentum of the will of God, and the miracles of his teachings will be forever victorious.

From the Bridge”The Importance of HistoryNot all that many years ago the Importance of history would have been a “no brainer!” People understood that there was very little new under the sun, and history was a good barometer to the future. “Those that fail to heed history are doomed to repeat it, “was an adage frequently heard. It gave us a perspective by which to stabilize our bearings and allowed us to find one of the few ways by which we could understand who we are. The myth that George Washington, not being able to lie, admitted to chopping down his father’s favorite cherry tree helped us create a moral compass. Abraham Lincoln’s moniker “Honest Abe,” took root when he worked as a young store clerk in New Salem, IL. The name stuck before he became a lawyer or a politician. His writings show that he valued honesty and in 1859 when he ran for the presidency the nickname became his campaign slogan. However, apparently ”Honest Abe” did lie about whether he was negotiating with the South to end the war and also knowingly concealed some of the most lethal weapons ever devised during the Civil War." These however, were very minor infractions when compared to what we are now expected to believe from our politicians.Since World War II the pace of life has moved faster than ever and may actually have overrun our ability to understand the significance and value of our own honesty. We no longer turn to our past for guidance regarding the future; rather we look into our future in terms of what we want and how we will get it. We have developed to the point that we are much smarter than our ancestors and no longer need their morality and guidance. What we don’t know we frequently fabricate and in most cases, no one picks up on it and if they do, it really doesn’t seem to matter. In short the past has become outdated, obsolete and therefore has become largely irrelevant to us. Being less informed about our past is not the result of a lack of information or education, but of ambivalence and indifference. Perhaps history belongs to the ages but not to us. To a great extent we as a people really do not believe that history matters very much, if at all. My quote “History is not owned solely by historians. It is part of everyone’s heritage,” was written for the opening page of my award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba.” Not only is it the anchor holding our Ship of State firmly secure, it is the root of our very being. Yes, history is important. In centuries past this statement would have been self-evident. Our predecessors devoted much time and effort in teaching their children history and it helped provide the foundation to understanding who they were. It provided them a reference whereby they could set their own life’s goals. However society has, to a great extent, turned its back on the past. We now live in an era where the present is most important and our future is being built on shifting sand. We, as a people are presently engaged in a struggle for economic survival and choose to think of ourselves in terms of where wind and tide is taking us, rather than where we came from. We can no longer identify with our ancestors, thus they are no longer relevant. Their lives were so different from our own that they no longer can shed any light on our experience or existence. Therefore, in the minds of many of us, the past no longer has the value it once had nor do we give it the credence it deserves. As in war, the truth is the first victim; however this casualty threatens the very fabric of our being. When fact and fiction are interchanged to satisfy the moment, the bedrock of history in undermined. When we depend on the truth to structure our future, it is vital that it be based on truthful history and the honesty of those who write it. It is a crime without penalty when our politicians tell us lies. In fact they are often shamefully rewarded; encouraging them to become even more blatant in the lies they tell.

Your neighbors are not all sheep. Your political opponents are not all evil or fools. Try talking to those you despise. They are your fellow citizens. And together, we are not lesser than any "greatest generation.".

I am a wildflower in your perfect bed of roses.

I would warn any minority student today against the temptations of self-segregation: take support and comfort from your own group as you can, but don’t hide within it.

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world: everyone you meet is your mirror.

From the moment we are born, we begin to die.

And when we have power- when you have power, Jae, you'll need to decide what to do with it. What kind of person you want to be. If you want to be like them.

Your dream is a reality that is waiting for you to materialize. Today is a new day! Don’t let your history interfere with your destiny! Learn from your past so that it can empower your present and propel you to greatness

Woman, the child of so many tears shall never perish.

With profound love, kindness, and harmony trees are endlessly extending their blessings. That is why we are still living.

Fear born of that stern matron Responsibility.

Someday change will be accepted as life itself.

Surely you can entrust your task to your friends." "No," said Taran, after a long pause, "I have taken it on myself through my own choice.""If that is so," answered Medwyn, "then you can give it up through your own choice.

start ignoring people who threaten your joy. literally, ignore them. say nothing. don’t invite any parts of them into your space.

It’s a baby. A baby can’t be without a mother.

Entrepreneurs are favored in neoliberal contexts because they prize ingenuity, self-invention, adaptation, dispensing with establishment hierarchies, and self-mastery. Church planting can be read as a religious incarnation of late modernity's entrepreneurial disposition.

She did not even trouble herself much to show Godfrey her gratitude. We may spoil gratitude as we offer it, by insisting on its recognition. To receive honestly is the best thanks for a good thing.

My genius is not so frail a thing that it cowers from the dirty fingers of newspapernen.

She smiles and snuggles into me as we wait for our table. I inhale her scent. Vanilla and something else. Something different. Smokey almost. Sexy. It drives me crazy with need and I have to move away while I can.

You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways.

What you know is what you share

So that’s why I’m such a big fan of storytelling. I think the most important thing is empathy. And it’s less about ‘those people’. Because I think we’re all ‘those people’.

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted the Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly error, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.

I think humans might be like butterflies; people die every day without many other people knowing about them, seeing their colors, hearing their stories... and when humans are broken, they're like broken butterfly wings; suddenly there are so many beauties that are seen in different ways, so many thoughts and visions and possibilities that form, which couldn't form when the person wasn't broken! So it is not a very sad thing to be broken, after all! It's during the times of being broken, that you have all the opportunities to become things unforgettable! Just like the broken butterfly wing that I found, which has given me so many thoughts, in so many ways, has shown me so many words, and imaginations! But butterflies need to know, that it doesn't matter at all if the whole world saw their colors or not! But what matters is that they flew, they glided, they hovered, they saw, they felt, and they knew! And they loved the ones whom they flew with! And that is an existence worthwhile!

For a moment, I felt like myself again. Not the new me, not the old me, just the real me.

I was in the winter of my life- and the men I met along the road were my only summer. At night I fell sleep with vision of myself dancing and laughing and crying with them. Three year down the line of being on an endless world tour and memories of them were the only things that sustained me, and my only real happy times. I was a singer, not very popular one, who once has dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is.When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lied you head.I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiviness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obssesion for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me.Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.LIVE FAST. DIE YOUNG. BE WILD. AND HAVE FUN.I believe in the country America used to be. I belive in the person I want to become, I believe in the freedom of the open road. And my motto is the same as ever- *I believe in the kindness of strangers. And when I’m at war with myself- I Ride. I Just Ride.*Who are you? Are you in touch with all your darkest fantasies?Have you created a life for yourself where you’re free to experience them?I Have.I Am Fucking Crazy. But I Am Free.