Quotes by American Authors - Page 20

I knew they would kill me when they found out, but…” He struggled for words, releasing a sharp breath. “I think I realized that I would rather die because I betrayed them, than live because I betrayed you.
Marissa Meyer
Remind me not to piss you off Red. You might aim for the heart and shoot me in the balls.
Nora Roberts
God requires something of us. We must confess our spiritual poverty, renounce our sins, and turn by faith to His Son, Jesus Christ. When we do that, we are born again. He gives us a new nature. He puts a little bit of heaven down in our souls.
Billy Graham
For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't deny that you're beautiful. No mirror could tell you otherwise. But there are beautiful women for the buying in any brothel in London. Oh yes, and the ballrooms, too, if one has the proper price. It wasn't your appearance that caught me. It was the way you put me down in the gallery at Sibley Court." Vaughn's lips curved in a reminiscent smile. "And the way you tried to bargain with me after." bargained," Mary corrected."That," replied Lord Vaughn, "is exactly what I mean. Has anyone ever told you that you haggle divinely? That the simple beauty of your self-interest is enough to bring a man to his knees?"Mary couldn't in honesty say that anyone had.Vaughn's eyes were as hard and bright as silver coins. "Those are the reasons I want you. I want you for your cunning mind and your hard heart, for your indomitable spirit and your scheming soul, for they're more honest by far than any of the so-called virtues.""The truest poetry is the most feigning?" Mary quoted back his own words to him."And the most feigning is the most true.
Lauren Willig
My chair rolls to a stop. his voice cut short, followed by a thump and sliding sound. My wheelchair rolls forward again. I look back and see Ragnar pushing it innocently along. Sevro isn't in the hallway behind us. I frown, wondering where he went, till he bursts out of a side passage."You! Troll!" Sevro shouts. "I'm a terrorist warlord! Stop throwing me. You made me drop my candy!" Sevro looks at the floor of the hallway. "Wait. Where is it? Dammit, Ragnar. Where is my peanut bar? You know how many people I had to kill to get that? Six! Six!" Ragnar chews quietly above me, and though I'm probably mistaken, I think I see him smile.
Pierce Brown
People can hate you or curse you, but if you love, then nothing can touch you.
Debasish Mridha
Step-parents, those fairy tale villains,Have been given a bad name.They're easy targets.When the family goes awryHow easy to blame them.I was blessed by the right steps...
Eileen Granfors
Blessed are the mendacious, for they shall grow wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.
James K. Morrow
We do learn and develop when we are exposed to those who are greater than we are. Perhaps this is the chief way we mature.
Madeleine L'Engle
It's probably not easy for a woman to understand what it's like to be a man. Imagine you're starving, and someone puts a huge buffet in front of you. There's delicious, mouth-watering food all around you, and it's really really hard not to eat it all. That's what it's like to be a man around attractive women. The urge to want to hump everything that moves is part of a man's natural programming. It's a deep-seated hunger. To suppress that hunger takes civilization and a lot of willpower.
Oliver Markus
Life finds its meaning and answers from what life does to serve others.
Debasish Mridha
In my life I’ve been very lucky to travel around the world and see students and teachers in nearly two dozen countries—but the most awe-inspiring experience I’ve ever had was two years after 9/11 when I had the chance to attend a conference in Manhattan and personally meet many of the heroic teachers who persevered under conditions that in our worst nightmares we could never have imagined. In my opinion there’s not been nearly enough written about those teachers, and I hope that changes soon.
Tucker Elliot
It is better to be young in your failures than old in your successes.
Flannery O'Connor
Trust nature and make peace with something in your life.
Danielle Barone
There is always something beautiful to hope for. Always have a goal to shoot for.
Debasish Mridha
True baptism allows us to reframe, and contain, the reality of evil, without needing to blame anyone else, without any need for shame or vengeance. We are all in this together, and our common wound shows itself in different ways.
Richard Rohr
I ...understand how a parent might hit a child- it's because you can look into their eyes and see a reflection of yourself that you wish you hadn't.
Jodi Picoult
What I have learned from the year past is something about miracles--miracles of healing and answered prayer and unexpected happy endings. Each came quietly and simply, on tiptoe, so that I hardly knew it had occurred.All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.Every time something hard becomes easier; every time you adjust to a situation which, last week, you didn't know existed; every time a kindness falls as softly as the dew; or someone you love who was ill grows better; every time a blessing comes, not with trumpet and fanfare, but silently as night, you have witnessed a miracle.
Faith Baldwin
Partner struck me as an ugly euphemism. Euphemism in the sense that people don’t like to talk about sex, so they displace it on to some kind of business model. Since I have a distaste for business, I see no appeal to something that sounds like a financial leadership team.
Barbara Browning
In too many instances we have settled for a world of our own shaping that is shaping up to be in terrible shape.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Each day the world is born anew for him who takes it rightly.
James Russell Lowell
If a job opens up that she could “sell” you for, tell her, “You’ve been such a valuable resource for me. I would really appreciate having your help on something. There’s a terrific position open at Company A, and I’m hoping you would be able to advocate on my behalf.” Don’t be shy about also asking a sponsor, “Do you know anyone I could talk to?
Kate White
Science is the process of obscuring the marvelous with explanations.
James Rozoff
Ironically, pretending that parenting is easy diminishes the value of family. As truth seekers and truth speakers, we need to be honest about the cost of parenting.
Leslie Leyland Fields
If one wants to be loved and return it full score dagger of silence closes the door.
David W. Earle
My mom's coming home soon," I said. "We should go to your place."Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. "I have rules about who I take there." I was getting really tired of that answer. "If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?" I guessed, fighting the urge to feel irritated. "Once I'm inside, I can never leave?"Patch studied me a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, twisted a key off his key chain, and slipped it into the front pocket of my pajama top. "Once you've gone inside, you have to keep coming back.
Becca Fitzpatrick
It's a pook, a messenger...spy is more like it," Kern explained sourly. "This one will tattle, and I'll never hear the end of it when I go back." An eyebrow lifted. "Consorting with a human.
Lori J. Fitzgerald
Every instinct that is found in any man is in all men. The strength of the emotion may not be so overpowering, the barriers against possession not so insurmountable, the urge to accomplish the desire less keen. With some, inhibitions and urges may be neutralized by other tendencies. But with every being the primal emotions are there. All men have an emotion to kill; when they strongly dislike some one they involuntarily wish he was dead. I have never killed any one, but I have read some obituary notices with great satisfaction.
Clarence Darrow
Oh, "Tanstaafl." Means "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." And isn't,' I added, pointing to a FREE LUNCH sign across room, 'or these drinks would cost half as much. Was reminding her that anything free costs twice as much in long run or turns out worthless.
Robert A. Heinlein
We must only believe.
David Paul Kirkpatrick
The Law-of-Destination is straightforward and simple: It is not possible to arrive where we never take the time to go.
Heather K. O'Hara
Katsumi Hosokawa - (he) believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music.
Ann Patchett
Even the boy who cried wolf as right about the wolf once.
Sherry Thomas
Look around you at the people you've been taught to hate, because hate is just a cloak that hides fear.
April White
Time Progression: Wasting >>Spending >> Managing >> Investing
Elizabeth Grace Saunders
Teach me how to fly, my beautiful butterfly.
Jay Bell
The Statue of Liberty's gender changed nothing. It was the same here as anywhere: men and their wars.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Misperceiving that there is one correct choice is a common mistake. Coming to understand that there are usually a few good choices--and then there's the one you pick, commit to, and make great--is the best way to make flexible, optimal, good decisions in life.
Katie Couric
She was alone and destitute in a world of pointless carnage. By an eight-hundred-year-old Sepahrdic tradition she ad been since the age of twelve and a half "bogeret l'reshut nafsha"--an adult wit authority over her own soul. The Torah taught, Choose life. And so, rather than die of pride, Sofia Mendes sold what she had to sell, and she survived.
Mary Doria Russell
The winds of potential change blow constantly through our existence altering potentialities until a tipping point or nexus shakes our thread into a different weave, a new existence. It is our pattern-sensing consciousnesses that tricks us into believing remaining static is an option, that this day is like the next or the one before, as if the chaos that change will inevitably bring can be avoided. It's a comforting lie . . .
Larry J. Dunlap
Within each of us are two competing sides, a polarity of character. Only one leads to greatness.
Lolly Daskal
Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.
Robinson Jeffers
Intelligence and education that hasn't been tempered by human affection isn't worth a damn.
Daniel Keyes
The HillI have come this far on my own legs,missing the bus, missing taxis,climbing always. One foot in front of the other,that is the way I do it.It does not bother me, the way the hill goes on.Grass beside the road, a tree rattlingits black leaves. So what?The longer I walk, the farther I am from everything.One foot in front of the other. The hours pass.One foot in front of the other. The years pass.The colors of arrival fade.That is the way I do it.
Mark Strand
Observing the wizard’s high magic was his biggest privilege as Kadmeion’s assistant.
Lita Burke
The night before, Belle had stayed up past her bedtime, making a few changes to her doll with her father's tools. She couldn't help it. Inspiration had struck. Her father always told her that when inspiration strikes, you must grab it.
Walt Disney Company
Pain could be killed. Sadness could not, but the drugs did shut its mouth for a time.
Colson Whitehead
I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall…and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.
Brandi L. Bates
The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.
Christopher Morley
People are not stupid. They believe things for reasons. The last way for skeptics to get the attention of bright, curious, intelligent people is to belittle or condescend or to show arrogance toward their beliefs.
Carl Sagan
Even now, Dickon was upstairs, writing sonnets to his new love, while back at Seadown House, Marianne was writing 'Ella' on scraps of paper and then burning them.
Jessica Day George
The surpluses will have to be expended somehow, and trust the oligarchs to find a way. Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great achievements in science, and especially in art. When the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they will have time to spare for other things. They will become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-lovers. And under their direction and generously rewarded, will toil the artists. The result will be great art; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time. And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship beauty
Jack London
Young people feel things so deeply, don't they?' she said quietly, almost to herself. 'Everything's happening for the first time.
Tommy Wallach
You know what the great thing about babies is? They are like little bundles of hope. Like the future in a basket.
Lish McBride
The best gifts anyone can give to themselves are good health habits.
Ellen J. Barrier
She smiled. "Of course. You are right. How can I enjoy my happiness when so many suffer?" He kissed her forehead. "Soon all suffering will end." She gazed up at him. "And I will be by your side forever." "Forever and ever and ever." He leaned over and kissed her. And so the adventure begins...
MaryLu Tyndall
His harmonic words could weave the fabric of time or spin matter from nothingness if the mood suited him.
Lita Burke
You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
I will gladly go to exhaustion waiting for him. Waiting for his discipline. Waiting for his affection. Waiting for the unknown.
Pam Godwin
Sometimes nothing is the best thing to say and often the best thing to do.
Michael Thomas Sunnarborg