Quotes by American Authors - Page 675

He had the beginning of wrinkles and the easy manner of one who has already made his mistakes.
Donald Kingsbury
When we spend money we lose them forever, when we give them away, we will have them forever.
Debasish Mridha
I know now, just quite howMy life and love might still go onIn your heart, in your mindI'll stay with you for all of time.
The Calling
Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
William James
There is a meaning of life but I've been sworn to secrecy.
Brian Spellman
Before you ever get the person you really want in your life, you will be tested with every person that was wrong for you. You will be tempted with what was easy, what was familiar, what was only physical, what was safe and what was simply a friend to pull you out of a difficult situation because you didn't want to be alone. When you finally meet the person you were meant to be with you won't have to guess, decide or choose. You will be drawn to them. They will seem to fit who you are, but at the same time have the missing pieces that makes you want to become a better person. There is no need to be guarded because this soul is like your own and talking to them about the deepest things in life are effortless. They won't be like any other you have met and you will find yourself looking for parts of them in everyone you meet.
Shannon L. Alder
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Dorothy Parker
If you have ever belonged to such a community, however, you may have discovered that the trouble starts when darkness falls on your life, which can happen in any number of unsurprising ways: you lose your job, your marriage falls apart, your child acts out in some attention getting way, you pray hard for something that does not happen, you begin to doubt some of the things you have been taught about what the Bible says. The first time you speak of these things in a full solar church, you can usually get a hearing. Continue to speak of them and you may be reminded that God will not let you be tested beyond your strength. All that is required of you is to have faith. If you still do not get the message, sooner or later it will be made explicit for you: the darkness is your own fault, because you do not have enough faith.
Barbara Brown Taylor
Okay," I said. "Now can I try riding a broomstick?" "No. Most witches don't use broomsticks because they aren't that comfortable. The only reason witches use broomsticks is because they are lightweight and easy to get off the ground." "Okay, so what can I fly?""At the moment, nothing," responded Trillman. "When you are ready, you can fly whatever you find comfortable and can get off the ground, as long as it isn't me.""So when do I get to fly my convertible?""Convertible?
Jennifer Priester
When the meaning is unclear there is no meaning.
Marty Rubin
Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (what was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether foul-tempered. If you didn't serve the nasty fellow, the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down.
Tom Robbins
I’m clenching my fists so tight my fingernails leave red crescent moons on my skin. I feel a surge, a heat roar up inside me. As bad as I’m hurting now, he’ll hurt ten times worse. That’s the only thing that keeps me going.
Jenny Han
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.
Willa Cather
My passion for human ecology was not a drive for closure—but rather the joy of endless openings and newfound connections. There is no final goal or perfect completion, only the expanding experience of being alive.
Richard J. Borden
I wouldn't give a tinker's damn for a man who isn't sometimes afraid. Fear's the spice that makes it interesting to go ahead.
Daniel Boone
Fear is a natural emotion in life, but you cannot let it dictate your actions. When you act out of fear, you will only meet failure. But act out of determination to conquer that fear, and you will succeed at anything. Maybe not the first time, or the second or third, but eventually—as long as you keep trying—you can conquer your fears and succeed.
Tiana Dalichov
Behind lay loneliness and delusions. Ahead lay answers, and yes, Riley. So bent double beneath my load, but naked no longer, I followed the two demons deeper into Hell.
Heather Heffner
Grace has a face. It is Jesus Christ.
John Paul Warren
Their daddy was fond of saying that mistakes weren't sins. The sin was not to learn from them.
Judith Henry Wall
Dicky was intelligent but he ended up selling tea because he was socially retarded.
Johnny B. Truant
Growing up, I slowly had this process of realizing that all the things around me that people had told me were just the natural way things were, the way things always would be, they weren’t natural at all. They were things that could be changed, and they were things that, more importantly, were wrong and should change, and once I realized that, there was really no going back.
Aaron Swartz
I'm sorry to say it, but it was hard on me to see life continue all around.
Diet Eman
Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.
Garth Stein
Thy fate is the common fate of all Into each life some rain must fall Some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I believe the way to write a good play is to convince yourself it is easy to do--then go ahead and do it with ease. Don't maul, don't suffer, don't groan till the first draft is finished. A play is a pheonix and it dies a thousand deaths. Usually at night. In the morning it springs up again from its ashes and crows like a happy rooster. It is never as bad as you think, it is never as good. It is somewhere in between, and success or failure depends on which end of your emotional gamut concerning its value it approaches more closely. But it is much more likely to be good if you think it is wonderful while you are writing the first draft. An artist must believe in himself. Your belief is contagious. Others may say he is vain, but they are affected.
Tennessee Williams
If you have ever experienced this type of unprofessional treatment, I doubt you would even consider giving them business in the future. Interrupting, ignoring, patronizing, or antagonizing a customer is like pouring gas on a fire and creates a more explosive situation than the original complaint. Still, it continues to happen every day, costing companies millions in lost revenue.
Susan C.Young
A smile is hidden beneath the mustache, it crinkles the corners of his hooded eyes. “I didn’t. I have other business in town and I told my friend I would attend to the matter of his son, as he could not do so himself.”t“Very kind of you.”t“Yes. I have been looking forward to it for quite some time.”tDaddy’s lemonade is almost gone, he sips it carefully, turning his eyes back to the water. “Looking forward to seeing the lad or to conducting your business?” Daddy is toying with him. t“Both. You see, I had never actually met his son.” The glass rests against Daddy’s lips, unmoving. Mr. Geyer watches him closely. “But now I have, so I can get on with my,” he fixes his own gaze on the water, as though trying to see whatever it is that has transfixed my father, “business.
Gwenn Wright
As cultural politics change, museums change with them.
Sharon Waxman
Security is a strange thing, a myth that the brain allows in exchange for a brief moment of peace.
Alessandra Torre
Who could better motivate Bill Russell than Bill Russell?
Red Auerbach
The Vine of Life grows a single melon. The color of the heart is unknown until the rind is split.
Jack Vance
Everything...affects everything
Jay Asher
A dog wags its tail with its heart.
Martin Buxbaum
Was I a fool to believe in fate or in some destined illusionary path? I don't know. But we all need something to believe in.
John-Talmage Mathis
The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.
Daniel Kahneman
What is peace? Balance three iron skewers tip to tip, one upon the other; at the summit, emplace an egg, so that it too poises static in mid-air, and there you have the condition of peace in this world of men.
Jack Vance
When we truly allow ourselves to feel our own pain, over time it comes to seem less personal. We start to recognize that what we’ve perceived as our pain is, at a deeper level, the pain inherent in human existence.
Sharon Salzberg
Some memories were all right, but others were dangerous.
Stephen King
She was a voice with a body as afterthought, a wry smile that sailed through heavy traffic. Give her a history and she'd disappear.Eric Packer about Vija Kinski
Don DeLillo
Don't fight the system, mock the system
Trevor Noah
He looked so much like me, I could tell that he saw it, too, we shared the smile of recognizing ourselves in each other, how many imposters do I have? DO we all make the same mistakes, or has one of us gotten it right, or even just a bit less wrong, am I the imposter?
Jonathan Safran Foer
What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.
Paul Di Filippo
The past few months have been the most serene of his adult life. The megalopolis in his mind has quieted to a country road. He does his work, he eats his bread, and he sleeps with the knowledge that today hasn't added to the sum of human misery. For now at least it's peace of a kind he hadn't imagined himself worthy of receiving.
Anthony Marra
Sometimes you have to go ‘yippee-ki-yay’ on a person who deserves it.
Naima Simone
I was afraid, sheer afraid, and wondered at myself. You see, I've no more pluck than any man of my inches but I'd been about a good bit. I'd seen adventure and heard other fellows talk it over, and I knew you're pretty sure to get out of everything with a whole skin till that last particular time that you don't - so what's the use of grizzling? ("Golden Baby")
Alice Brown
And Mega has a crush on Chester.""I do not!""Do too, Mega.""He's like, old!""How old, Christian says.""Like at least thirty or something."Lor laughs. " Fucking ancient, ain't it, kid?""Dude," I agree. I like Lor.
Karen Marie Moning
You know, the answer to your problem is just an attitude change away.
Cameo Renae
[B]eauty is one of the things that make you cry and so maybe beauty is always tied up in tears.
Rebecca Solnit
A principled person’s greatest disappointment will always be his or her own failures to respond to setbacks in a dynamic and positive way.
Kilroy J. Oldster
We can't control our destiny. We can't go back into our past history and make changes. But we can begin this moment by setting a goal and pursuing it for a better life with a greater purpose.
Ellen J. Barrier
Crying is part of the adventure
Gail Carson Levine
There is peace where mind and heart agree.
T.F. Hodge
Pain doesn't last. And when it's gone, we have something to show for it. Growth.
Kamal Ravikant
We are force-fed beliefs through incessant advertisements by a culture that ceaselessly fosters our conformity to values which are of no service to the individual.
Chris Matakas
He felt more crypts cracking open inside of him; the stench he smelled was not decayed bodies but decayed memories, and that was somehow worse.
Stephen King
A fucked-up family's a fucked-up family, whether or not werewolves are involved.
Carrie Vaughn
Television's compelling power is its immediacy . .. this immediacy feeds the politics of emotions gut reactions and impressions rather than the politics of logic facts and reason it emphasizes personality rather than issues.
Hedrick Smith
It came to my house.It sat on my shoulders.Your shadow is yours. I told it so. I said it was yours.I have carried it with me too long. I give it back.
Mark Strand
I'm a sucker for curiosity's whims.Does that make me a cat person?
Richelle E. Goodrich
Her heart is of a much harder material... A diamond. Beautiful, but deadly…And amid people with hearts of diamonds, it is best to remember that no one is exempt from their malevolence. Not even themselves.
Katlyn Charlesworth