Quotes by American Authors - Page 526

She has never been a pretty crier. She sobbed the way she did everything else - with passion and excess. That she had managed to keep it inside her this long was astounding to James. He thought of pushing open the half-closed door and kneeling before his wife, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and helping her upstairs. He raised his hand, stroking the wood of the door, planning to say something to calm her. But what wisdom could he offer Gus, when he could not even heed it himself? James walked upstairs again, got into bed, covered his head with a pillow. And hours later, when Gus crept beneath the sheets, he tried to pretend that he did not feel the weight of her grief, lying between them like a fitful child, so solid that he could not reach past it to touch her.
Jodi Picoult
The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.
Pauline Kael
The carnistic schema, which twists information so that nonsense seems to make perfect sense, also explains why we fail to see the absurdities of the system. Consider, for instance, advertising campaigns in which a pig dances joyfully over the fire pit where he or she is to be barbecued, or chickens wear aprons while beseeching the viewer to eat them. And consider the Veterinarian's Oath of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 'I solemnly swear to use my...skills for the...relief of animal suffering,' in light of the fact that the vast majority of veterinarians eat animals simply because they like the way meat tastes. Or think about how poeple won't replace their hamburgers with veggie burgers, even if the flavor is identical, because they claim that, if they try hard enough, they can detect a subtle difference in texture. Only when we deconstruct the carnistic schema can we see the absurdity of placing our preference for a flawless re-creation of a textural norm over the lives and deaths of billions of others.
Melanie Joy
Finding one’s voice is a process of finding one’s passion.
Terry Tempest Williams
I like these experts because they seem decent, and because I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now. They do not know what my mother remembered. I don't know what my mother remembered either.
Elizabeth Strout
I've never met a problem a proper cupcake couldn't fix.
Sarah Ockler
I’m a reporter,” Rachel said. “I write about the arts, festivals, new projects in the city. What I’m not is some kind of psychic astral traveler! How did I get here? Planning a trip to another dimension?
G.G. Collins
Busy days galore...thoughts in a kaleidoscope of dervish dances.
Al Cash
Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off. If my mother's friend had said, "Never mind, it's too much work," I'd have blown my top, because I want to beat this damn thing, as long as I've gone this far. I can't just leave it after I've found out so much about it. I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.
Ralph Leighton
You try to tell yourself that you've been lucky, most incredibly lucky, and usually that works because it's true. Sometimes it doesn't work, that's all. Then you cry.
Stephen King
You cannot be aware of yourself, for you are awareness itself. How can a witness witness itself? That is like trying to see your own eyes without a reflection, or cut a knife with the tip of its own blade—it is impossible. The subject can only observe the object; it cannot make an object out of itself. But by the very act of observing, you indirectly know yourself as the observer, as the subject. No witnessing of the witness is needed to prove its existence.
Joseph P. Kauffman
The key for me was to have faith and trust in God to transform me. This was scary because the foundation that once kept me safe and secure was being taken from me!
Michael Barbarulo
The three children had hear the story of the Duene lovers, but they interpreted it differently. And it does not matter, ultimately, what they heard or even what they knew. It is how they interpret the story that will make all the difference.
Tiphanie Yanique
The problem isn’t that I think so highly of myself. It is just that you think so little of yourself. Live life BIG, BOLD and OUT LOUD!
Shannon L. Alder
Through an arrow loop in the wall she saw a familiar horse and rider tearing across the camp toward the healing rooms. Brigan pulled up at Nash's feet and dropped from the saddle. The two brothers threw their arms around each other and embraced hard.Shortly thereafter he stepped into the healing rooms and leaned in the doorway, looking across at her quietly. Brocker's son with the gentle gray eyes.She abandoned all pretense of decorum and ran at him.
Kristin Cashore
It seems to me that you can almost define civilization by saying it's people who are not willing to hurt other people because the other people are different.
Gene Wolfe
There are fundamentally two ways you can experience the police in America: as the people you call when there's a problem, the nice man in uniform who pats a toddler's head and has an easy smile for the old lady as she buys her coffee. For others, the police are the people who are called on them. They are the ominous knock on the door, the sudden flashlight in the face, the barked orders. Depending on who you are, the sight of an officer can produce either a warm sense of safety and contentment or a plummeting feeling of terror.
Chris L. Hayes
Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The nature of your outcome or problem in large part depends upon you. Results are what you get when you follow the rules. Consequences are the results of negative choices. Your thoughts become your actions. Your thoughts should be focused on what you desire.
Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.
Jaden felt their boredom, their tired eternity. Beyond that, she felt their dying essence. They were immortal—all-powerful beings—and yet they were powerless against the onslaught of ever-changing time. They were lost in a modern world, one they didn’t have the energy to understand. And, in being lost, they were immobilized against it. Not even their judgments could assuage their exhausted wisdom of forever.
Michelle M. Pillow
Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement.
Peter Straub
I insist that the question of the future is how best to keep these millions from brooding over the wrongs of the past and difficulties of the present, so that all their energies may be bent toward a cheerful striving and cooperation with their white neighbors toward a larger, juster, and fuller future
W.E.B. Du Bois
Children only know what you teach them.
Paul Ramsey
I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen
Ron Suskind
According to just about every poll on happiness, people on the Left are generally less happy than conservatives.
Dennis Prager
It's Up to You To Get Your Dreams and Goals Moving
Brenda Johnson Padgitt
I'm water... If you're oil, we'll clash. If you're a flower, I'll nourish you. If you're a light, I'll reflect you. If you can't swim, you'll drown in me. If you're up for adventure, I'm endless entertainment. I'm just being me. If we don't fit, it's not my fault, nor yours. You be you. I'll be me.
Steve Maraboli
In our modern world, we often separate faith from practice. But the way of Jesus rejects this notion. Only living our faith offers the credibility to teach our faith. Anything less is less that the teachings of Christ.
Dillon Burroughs
And be grateful that you’re a Scanner. Not everyone can have this much fun with nothing but what’s between her ears.
Barbara Sher
Whose team are you on?” I ask him.   “I don’t follow you – what do you mean whose team am I on?” he asks.   “I mean, you want your son back and there are forces in this world that want to take him from you. There is a battle going on. Sides have been taken, John’s team is his family and the other team is everything that you don’t want for your son. Walking away is the exact thing that the other side wants. Instead of walking away, you need to fight.”   I add: “Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be and he will become what he should be.
JohnA Passaro
Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.
Pauline Kael
Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock--his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown--but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max's team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use all the weapons at one's disposal, but to just make sure you won when you used them.
Dave Eggers
I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.
Libba Bray
I am a congenital optimist about America, but I worry that American democracy is exhibiting fatal symptoms. DC has become an acronym for Dysfunctional Capital: a swamp in which partisanship has grown poisonous, relations between the White House and Congress have paralyzed basic functions like budgets and foreign agreements, and public trust in government has all but disappeared. These symptoms are rooted in the decline of a public ethic, legalized and institutionalized corruption, a poorly educated and attention-deficit-driven electorate, and a 'gotcha' press - all exacerbated by digital devices and platforms that reward sensationalism and degrade deliberation. Without stronger and more determined leadership from the president and a recovery of a sense of civic responsibility among the governing class, the United States may follow Europe down the road of decline.
Graham Allison
Opportunities don’t make U turns.
James J-Pierre
Liberty opens the door to possibility. Freedom gives us a chance to make that possibility a reality.
Debasish Mridha
I loved him, more than anything else in the world and that when he was away it was hard to breath and that I couldn't go through a single second without thinking about him.
Heather James
Sometimes you have to choose between being strong and being honest, if you want real answers.
Jessiqua Wittman
Sometimes you have to forsake what you want, to get what you want.
E'yen A. Gardner
The world was so beautiful, and there was so much of it: he could gaze forever at the wonder of leaves and not see them all: could inhale the wind and not smell all its scents, hear the sounds of men and horses and not hear all the sounds of the woods, and taste the thousand flavors in stale water and still find it wonderful... because it was not the darkness.
C.J. Cherryh
Peace ain't worth fighting for.
Brian Spellman
You ball up your fist each time you hear about an unfound injustice in the world. That makes me your brother.
Darnell Lamont Walker
It never ceases to amaze me how many people think I kill for fun.”“Don’t y
Karen Chance
Be warned. Beware. Enter this kingdom only if you dare.
Diana S. Zimmerman
Summer arrives with the morning sun.Beach time breezes in with endless fun.
Debasish Mridha
A rush of cold air blew against his face as he left her bakery. While he walked, Kaden tried to convince himself the date wasn't a big deal, but it was. The nervous energy swirling in his stomach gave him away. He'd never been on a date. Ever. He had met his wife the day they were bonded. He wasn't even sure of the proper protocol for a human date. His brothers had one-night stands, not dates. There was no way he could ask them. They'd never let him live it down. Perhaps he could find the answer on Google?tWith all he had learned since his arrival, he was confident he could figure this out. Besides, this was a date with Annabelle - the one human he had made a connection with. After everything they had been through, taking her out on a date should be easy. tWhat could possibly go wrong?
Stacey O'Neale
Are people innately altruistic?" is the wrong kind of question to ask. People are people, and they respond to incentives. They can nearly always be manipulated--for good or ill--if only you find the right levers.
Steven D. Levitt
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.
Theodore J. Kaczynski
The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself.
Truman Capote
Accepted social gender roles and expectations are so entrenched in our culture that most people cannot imagine any other way. As a result, individuals fitting neatly into these expectations rarely if ever question what gender really means. They have never had to, because the system has worked for them.
Nicki Petrikowski
Everything is in the root. If you pick the weed without getting the root out of the soil, be assured, it is going to grow back.
Sheila M. Burke
Robert Pattinson reads all of the time and he refers so many great books.
Kellan Lutz
How a plain and wagon on Mulberry Street, Grows into a story that no one can beat
Dr. Seuss
What held the civilized world together was the thinnest tissue of nothing but human will.
Paulette Jiles
As children get older, this incidental outdoor activity--say, while waiting to be called to eat--becomes less bumptious, physically and entails more loitering with others, sizing people up, flirting, talking, pushing, shoving and horseplay. Adolescents are always being criticized for this kind of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it. The trouble comes when it is done not within society, but as a form of outlaw life.The requisite for any of these varieties of incidental play is not pretentious equipment of any sort, but rather space at an immediately convenient and interesting place. The play gets crowded out if sidewalks are too narrow relative to the total demands put on them. It is especially crowded out if the sidewalks also lack minor irregularities in building line. An immense amount of both loitering and play goes on in shallow sidewalk niches out of the line of moving pedestrian feet.
Jane Jacobs
You cannot afford to be too busy to pray.
Billy Graham
Truth is as straight as an arrow, while a lie swivels all over the place. You can hide Truth under a doormat, but eventually the mat will rise very high with Time — forcing it to reveal all the truths it conceals.
Suzy Kassem
Good God, the lad is a lass!
Margaret Mallory
It's night in the Free People's World Tree Library. All the librarians are asleep, ... between the pages of their enchanted novels.
Kelly Link
For the first time in years Ashley found herself feeling truly alone. Despite being surrounded by people most of every day, she was unable to connect to them in a way she considered meaningful, and found herself passing through their lives - and her own - in a state of total isolation.
Alex Ross Perry