Quotes by American Authors - Page 615

What were you supposed to say to people you barely knew? That was the kind of thing I needed lessons in - forget algebra and history.
Jennifer R. Hubbard
The loss of a child exploits the emotions of each individual it encounters.
Asa Don Brown
The reason is that you eat too many foods that are high in "calories," which are little units that measure how good a particular food tastes. Fudge, for example, has a great many calories, whereas celery, which is not really a food at all but a member of the plywood family, provided by Mother Nature so that mankind would have a way to get onion dip into his mouth at parties, has none.
Dave Barry
Picasso said that art is a lie, but a lie that tells the truth" ... Calder wondered what Picasso had meant. Was it that art wasn't exactly the real world, but it said something real?
Blue Balliett
This is it.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Sorry," I said to the Duke."Eh, it's not your fault. It's Carla's fault. You were turning the wheel. Carla just wasn't listening. I knew I shouldn't have loved her. She's like all the others, Tobin; as soon as I confess my love, she abandons me."I laughed. "I never abandoned you," I said patting on her back."Yeah, well, (a.) I never confessed my love to you, and (b.) I'm not even female to you.
John Green
UN-Impressives of the Poor Listener•tThinking about what you should have done, could have done, or need to do. •tAllowing your emotional reactions to take over.•tInterrupting the person talking.•tReplying before you hear all the facts.•tJumping to conclusions and making assumptions.•tBeing preoccupied with what you're going to say next. •tGetting defensive or being over-eager. •tOne-upmanship—feeling the urge to compete and add something bigger, better, or more significant than what the speaker has to share.•tImposing an unsolicited opinion.•tIgnoring and changing the subject altogether.
Susan C.Young
Surely it is foolish to hate facts. The struggle against the past is a futile struggle. Acceptance seems so much more like wisdom. I know all this. And yet there are some facts that one must never, never accept. This is not merely an emotional matter. The reason that one must hate certain facts is that one must prepare for the possibility of their return. If the past were really past, then one might permit oneself an attitude of acceptance, and come away from the study of history with a feeling of serenity. But the past is often only an earlier instantiation of the evil in our hearts. It is not precisely the case that history repeats itself. We repeat history—or we do not repeat it, if we choose to stand in the way of its repetition. For this reason, it is one of the purposes of the study of history that we learn to oppose it.
Leon Wieseltier
Optimism is the most important human trait, because it allows us to evolve our ideas, to improve our situation, and to hope for a better tomorrow.
Seth Godin
Though I learned little in my compromised state, I learned enough to make a decision: I was going to understand how mood could overwhelm. I was going to understand depression or die trying.
Jonathan Rottenberg
Life moves forward, not backward, and it would be wise to listen to what change has to say.
Bryant McGill
May 4, 1985. I am packing for a short trip to New York to discuss the cat book with Brion. In the front room where the kittens are kept, Calico Jane is nursing one black kitten. I pick up my Tourister. It seems heavy. I look inside and there are her other four kittens."Take care of my babies. Take them with you wherever you go.
William S Burroughs
My head is in a world of hurt. My apartment is trashed. At the end of today, I could either be dating the girl who saves my family’s future or is going to be the ending of it. When did life get so damn complicated?
Pella Grace
His will to live was waning, and it made him almost transparent, as though rather than dying, he might just disappear one day, leaving behind only a vague scent of regret.
Ian Morgan Cron
Ahab and aguish lay stretched together in one hammock.
Herman Melville
Given the choice between trivial material brilliantly told versus profound material badly told, an audience will always choose the trivial told brilliantly.
Robert McKee
I love round tables," said Magnus brightly. "They suit me so much better than square.
Cassandra Clare
Sometimes when I prepare to write, I feel the same sensation wash over me as if my toes were curling over the brink of a high cliff, my gaze peering downward into a dark pond, and I anxiously wonder, will the water prove deep enough? Will my words be satisfactory?
Richelle E. Goodrich
When we no longer have the strength to keep on walking, God will carry us. His strength is enough for you and I.
Dana Arcuri
Why Do Some People NOT Take Initiative?•tThey have a FEAR of . . . rejection, looking stupid, failing, criticism, getting out of their comfort zone, or imposing on other people.•tThey are unmotivated or uninspired.•tThey get stuck in negativity, confusion, stress, or doubt.•tThey don’t want to upset the apple cart or the status quo.•tThey are lazy, disengaged, or indifferent.•tThey have LACK of . . . energy, desire, confidence, self-esteem, skills, creativity, imagination, connections, resources, education.
Susan C.Young
... the world can give you these glimpses as well as fairy tales can--the smell of rain, the dazzle of sun on white clapboard with the shadows of ferns and wash on the line, the wildness of a winter storm when in the house the flame of a candle doesn't even flicker.
Frederick Buechner
When we hold onto worry, regret, and anger, peace of mind, strength of body, and freedom of spirit eludes us.
Charles F. Glassman
No one really knows what words mean these days.
Mark Doten
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
Willa Cather
Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” (Wellesly High School commencement speech, “You Are Not Special”, 6-12)
Teacher David McCullough
But why?" Vimbai whispered, overwhelmed with the weight of accumulated disbelief. "What is happening to us?""Who knows?" Maya shrugged. "Who cares? Enjoy it while you can, why don't you? There will be tons of boring shit in your life, okay? I promise.
Ekaterina Sedia
I was born in a hospital. I do not want to die in one.
J.R. Rim
One of the biggest favors that you can do for yourself is to accept your loved ones for who they are, and not be constantly disappointed because they are not who you think they should be.
Jennifer O'Neill
‪Am I dead? Is this heaven? No, I can't be. I'm realizing this as I process my second sensation: discomfort. I turn my head. Ooh, a TV. Maybe it is heaven.
Karen Bergreen
The reason [James Clerk] Maxwell's Demon cannot exist is that it does take resources to perform an act of discrimination. We imagine computation is free, but it never is. The very act of choosing which particle is cold or hot itself becomes an energy drain and a source of waste heat. The principle is also known as "no free lunch."We do our best to implement Maxwell's Demon whenever we manipulate reality with our technologies, but we can never do so perfectly; we certainly can't get ahead of the game, which is known as entropy. All the air conditioners in a city emit heat that makes the city hotter overall. While you can implement what seems to be a Maxwell's Demon if you don't look too far or too closely, in the big picture you always lose more than you gain.Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell's Demon, separating the state of "one" from the state of "zero" for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved.
Jaron Lanier
Who hasn't been told "love you?" I don't put much stock in such words because it's the "I" that gives "love you" its true essence and intimate meaning, so unless someone can bring themselves to say "I love you," don't subtract from the significance by saying something less.
Donna Lynn Hope
... as Eskimo language is to snow, so archaic English is to 'metal objects designed to cause harm'.
Austin Grossman
In 1965, I marched for equality.
Alphonso Jackson
Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring)
Lisa Kleypas
We were never supposed to worship time like we worship the sun and the light it brings.The only gift that time brings us, as human beings, is a signal that our life here on Earth is not permanent, it is fleeting.
Courtney Beck
At a certain point in her life, she realises it is not so much that she wants to have a child as that she does not want not to have a child, or not to have had a child.
Lydia Davis
Nature's design is fully economical. Human design follows this model when it minimizes information and maximizes understanding.
Maggie Macnab
I give him a smile I don't really own.
Alyson Noel
My mother always said 'Don't bother other people.' I think that's good advice.
Amy Sedaris
Prayer, in essence, is conversation with God. You can talk to Him about anything and everything - He loves to hear from His children. Praise Him for His incredible love, tell Him why you love your favorite song, ask Him for help with problems at home, work or school and thank Him for His responses.
Teresa Santoski
Once I have impounded love and towed it into the confine of words, I have lost it altogether.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Close your eyes and picture it. Can you see it?"I nod, eyes closed. its texture, shape, and color—got it?"I smile, holding the image in my head. its contours with the tips of your fingers, cradle its weight in the palms of your hands, then combine all of your senses—sight, touch, smell, taste—can you taste it?"I bite my lip and suppress a giggle. it!" he says.So I do. I do all of those things. And when he groans, I open my eyes to see for myself.. This isn't even close.""Nope, nothing fruity about him." I laugh, smiling ateach of my Damens—the replica I manifested before me, and the flesh and blood version beside me. Both of them equally tall, dark, and so devastatingly handsome they hardly seem real.
Alyson Noel
Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?
Jacqueline Novogratz
Concentrate your energies your thoughts and your capital. ... The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket.
Andrew Carnegie
Horace Greeley pursues temperance to extravagance." Lord Acton
Harold Holzer
He smelled like a wolf and I knew I should run, instead I opened my heart and invited him in for a bite.
Melody Lee
There were so many desperate people on the street crying for help that you had to shut off your heart or the pain would be too much. After a while, you can´t care anymore. And that is what hell is like.
Yeonmi Park
An odd thing about beauty, however, is that it's absence tends not to arouse our sympathy as much as other forms of privation do.
Jonathan Franzen
Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning.
Noam Chomsky
In German one of the terms for imagination is the compound word Einbildungskraft: literally, the "power ( Kraft)" of "forming ( Bildung)" into "one (Ein)." Here I want us to reflect about faith as a kind of imagination. Faith forms a way of seeing our everyday life in relation to holistic images of what we may call the ultimate environment. Human action always involves responses and initiatives. We shape our action ( our responses and initiatives) in accordance with what we see to be going on. We seek to fit our actions into, or oppose them to , larger patterns of action and meaning. Faith, in its binding us to centers of value and power and in its triadic joining of us into communities of shared trusts and loyalties, gives forms and content to our imaging of an ultimate environment.
James W. Fowler
In my dream, people apologized for things that were about to happen, and lit candles by inhaling.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Some people seem like a bright light during your darkest moment... a beautiful refuge... but it's a trap... there is only more pain there. Now that I think about it... I imagine that's what bugs feel like when they fly into the zapper.
Steve Maraboli
These questions are difficult. The answers are not obvious, and so there should be some pausing, some angst, some honest uncertainty as people struggle to decide the best course of action. But I see none of this in the press releases and reports I read. Instead I see both sides telling us that to be uncertain, to dialogue instead of rail, is to betray the cause.
Alisa Harris
My whole life I’ve been ordered about. Now I shall give the orders.” I’ve never seen Felicity so wounded. “Not me,” she says. “I never ordered you about.” “Oh, Fee.” The old Pippa surfaces for just a moment, hopeful and childlike. She pulls Felicity to her. Something I cannot name passes between them, and then Pip’s lips are on Fee’s in a deep kiss, as if they feed on one another, their fingers entwined in each other’s hair. And suddenly, I understand what I must have always known about them—the private talks, the close embraces, the tenderness of their friendship. A blush spreads across my neck at the thought. How could I not have seen it before?
Libba Bray
As a result of his experiments he concluded that imitation was a real evil that had to be broken before real rhetoric teaching could begin. This imitation seemed to be an external compulsion. Little children didn’t have it. It seemed to come later on, possibly as a result of school itself.That sounded right, and the more he thought about it the more right it sounded. Schools teach you to imitate. If you don’t imitate what the teacher wants you get a bad grade. Here, in college, it was more sophisticated, of course; you were supposed to imitate the teacher in such a way as to convince the teacher you were not imitating, but taking the essence of the instruction and going ahead with it on your own. That got you A’s. Originality on the other hand could get you anything – from A to F. The whole grading system cautioned against it.
Robert M. Pirsig
Fame is simply an imbalance between inbound and outbound attention.
Clay Shirky
Try picking on someone who can handle you, you worthless little limp dick of a shit." In retrospect I could have picked my taunts a little better. Obviously, the Horned God was very sensitive about his equipment.
K.H. Koehler
It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.
Harper Lee
They took they hit the cobblestone streets to look at churches, with Isabella wearing suede Manolos. "She's breaking her legs and I tell her it's just ridiculous and that she had to get some proper shoes." She bought and put on a pair of espadrilles and promptly broke into tears. "I can't. I can't. Everytime I look down on my feet I feel so depressed." Roberts said, "Well, are you going to be depressed or are you going to have a broken ankle?" "I am going to have a broken ankle" she said and she threw the shoes away.
Lauren Goldstein Crowe
The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.
Natalie Babbitt