Quotes by American Authors - Page 680

You walked in, and the air changed. It gives you an advantage and you're enough of a challenge. I'm not trying to be a challenge. It's one of the things that makes you one.
Nora Roberts
I perceived quite early that I was a reader, and most of the people I came into contact with were not. It made a barrier. What they wanted to talk about were things they had eaten, touched, or done. What I wanted to talk about was what I had read.
Frederik Pohl
It was summer here and he wondered if there existed a different season for every corner of this world in this moment and the moments to come. Whether if you traveled fast and far enough you could witness a year passing in a single journey.
Paul Yoon
What counted was not the facts but the fears.
Max Lerner
Salvation belongs to the sinner. Jesus already has bought the salvation of the worst sinner, just as He did for us. That’s the reason He told us to go tell the Good News; go tell sinners they’re reconciled to God.
Kenneth E. Hagin
But I couldn’t block out the sound of his voice. “Hayden wasn’t the son I expected to have,” he said. “I’d imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I’d done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son.” His voice cracked. “But my second son didn’t enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn’t know how to talk to him. And now I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I’d learned how.” He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying.
Michelle Falkoff
Faith is an attitude of the person. It means you are prepared to stake yourself on something being so.
Arthur M. Ramsey
God's big enough that small doesn't matter.
N.D. Wilson
I'm not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.
Sarah Dessen
No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.
Philip K Dick
Each time I walk into a classroom, I can choose the place within myself from which my teaching will come, just as I can choose the place within my students toward which my teaching will be aimed. I need not teach from a fearful place: I can teach from my curiosity or hope or empathy or honesty, places that are as real within me as are my fears. I can have fear, but I need not be fear - if I am willing to stand somewhere else in my inner landscape.
Parker J. Palmer
I love you,’ he whispered, and kissed my brow. ‘Thorns and all.
Sarah J Maas
I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'But it's never just one moment. It's a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there's a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don't.
Nicola Yoon
[Koudelka] looked back, "You?! I know you! You trust beyond reason!"[Cordelia] met his eyes steadily, "Yes, it's how I get results beyond hope, as you may recall.
Lois McMaster Bujold
As water cannot rise higher than its source, so the moral quality in an act can never be higher than the motive that inspires it. For this reason no act that arises from an evil motive can be good, even though some good may appear to come out of it. Every deed done out of anger or spite, for instance, will be found at last to have been done for the enemy and against the kingdom of God.
A.W. Tozer
Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.
Jim Rohn
When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?
Jennifer Egan
Moonlight drifts from overA hundred thousand milesTo fall upon a cemeteryIt reads a hundred epitaphsAnd then smiles at a nest ofBaby owls
Richard Brautigan
Your life is a precious gift from an imaginative loving Source that endlessly breathes life.
Dashama Konah Gordon
Darwin may have been quite correct in his theory that man descended from the apes of the forest, but surely woman rose from the frothy sea, as resplendent as Aphrodite on her scalloped chariot.
Margot Datz
From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out, and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.
Ed Mitchell
For Southerners, a white skin was the distinguishing badge of mind and intellect. Black skin was the sign that a given people had been providentially designed to serve as menial laborers, as what Hammond called the “mudsill” class necessary to support every society.
David Brion Davis
He looked at me thoughtfully, and smiled slowly, his green eyes warm. He smelled of the outdoors, he was so tall and broad shouldered and so ... male ... in this house of women he was shockingly different. All I could think of was how much I wanted to kiss him. I was clearly losing my mind.
Abbi Waxman
When men age they're called sophisticated. When women age they ain't called at all.
Lois Greiman
A willingness to go against the conventional wisdom was one of the side effects of looking at the world in a particular light.
Kem Nunn
Nothing can destroy your inner peace except your uncontrolled thoughts.
Debasish Mridha
Truth may start out timid, but it finishes bold.
T.J. Forrester
Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
Mark Twain
No amount of wavy blond hair nor evenings spent with her plump lips applying just the right amount of pressure to his various pleasure points could make up for the rotting carcass of a soul that resided beneath all that beauty.
Nicki Elson
There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.
Flannery O'Connor
Some people see the cup as half empty. Some people see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large.
George Carlin
Read good writing, and don’t live in the present. Live in the deep past, with the language of the Koran or the Mabinogion or Mother Goose or Dickens or Dickinson or Baldwin or whatever speaks to you deeply. Literature is not high school and it’s not actually necessary to know what everyone around you is wearing, in terms of style, and being influenced by people who are being published in this very moment is going to make you look just like them, which is probably not a good long-term goal for being yourself or making a meaningful contribution. At any point in history there is a great tide of writers of similar tone, they wash in, they wash out, the strange starfish stay behind, and the conches.
Rebecca Solnit
You have to hate them, you mean? You can’t decide: I will or I won’t hate them?”Amar did not completely understand. “But I hate them now,” he explained. “The day Allah wants me to stop hating them, He’ll change my heart.”The man was smiling, as if to himself. “If the world’s really like that, it’s very easy to be in it,” he said.“It will never be easy to be in the world,” Amar said firmly. “Er tabi mabrhach. God doesn’t want it easy.
Paul Bowles
Don’t tell me you’re not good at something. People will always be better and worse than you at everything you do. Tell me whether or not you are making progress. If you are progressing, are you measuring your progress? If you are not progressing, why not? Get to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Develop your own personal progress plan and determine how you could improve and progress from where you are. You most likely don’t know how far you have come and how much you truly have accomplished. Improve and progress!
Jerald Simon
You could say that they were sweet, or you could say that they were something out of a horror movie.
Dan Chaon
I had a vague memory of being that ridiculous at one time. Let he who hath never worn parachute pants cast the first stone.
Jim Butcher
Using titles such as Mr., Mrs., Miss, Dr., etc. demonstrates respect. In previous generations, it was a social necessity and simply good manners. One would consider you rude and uncultured if you were so presumptuous as to go straight to a “first name basis.” First names can imply an intimacy that does not exist and it may offend a new person until they know you better. Be wary of making assumptions.
Susan C.Young
Back on the Hauser regime, I start the day with his notorious "pep breakfast" -- two raw eggs beaten in orange juice. Hauser describes it as a "creamy drink fit for a King's table." I do not feel the same way. This is so much worse than the raw eggs in milk that I drank for the Marilyn Monroe diet.If pneumonia were a food, this is what it would taste like.
Rebecca Harrington
I'm here because all fairy tales take place in the woods, King Cole, even those that don't.
Bill Willingham
It would appear that the blue sky is actually produced by the solar wind and solar radiation exciting air molecules to emit light, just like a neon lamp!
Steven Magee
Parents must try to be, or at least put forth their best efforts to be, what they wish [their] children to be. It is impossible for you to be an example of what you are not.
Joseph Fielding Smith
The internet can be many things, of course. Too often it's a cesspool of distraction, a place we indulge in the modern sport of snark and schandenfrende, building the case for our own bigotries, where we mock and thereby dismiss the suggering of others.
Strayed
It is too facile to say that the way to follow Tao is to simply go along with the flow of life. Sometimes, like the carp, we must know when to go it alone.
Ming-Dao Deng
Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a “dead end”. “Street culture,” as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban reality is synonymous with survival at all costs. This world view is mostly negative, because it demands constant adjustment to circumstances that are often far beyond young people’s control or understanding, such as economics, education, housing, employment, nutrition, law, and so forth.
Haki R. Madhubuti
The best that could be left behind by any man: children who had been brought up to behave responsibly and to believe in something beyond their own self gratification. (The Americans
John Jakes
A man has no right to occupy another man’s time unnecessarily
John D. Rockefeller
Everyone living is doomed
Taylor Caldwell
That's right,' Mel said. 'Some vassal would come along and spear the bastard in the name of love. Or whatever the fuck it was they fought over in those days.'Same things we fight over these days,' Terri said.Laura said, 'Nothing's changed.
Raymond Carver
Harry loves slimy things, hairy things, and creepy things. Harry loves anything horrible. I know -- I'm his best friend Doug.
Suzy Kline
Kelsier rapped lightly on the door, and Dockson strolled over, pulling it open."And he makes his stunning entry!" Kelsier announced, sweeping into the room, throwing back his mistcloak.Dockson snorted, shutting the doors. "You're truly a wonder to behold, Kell. Particularly the soot stains on your knees.
Brandon Sanderson
The emotion she could deal with best was anger.
Orson Scott Card
We have eyes to see beauty and a heart to love and appreciate it.
Debasish Mridha
Everything that has ever been beautiful has been burned. Like you.
Holly Lynn Payne
Sanity is over-rated. It lacks color.
Forrest Carr
Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.
Winifred Gallagher
I am but the reflection in your eyes, the effect of your expressions, and the sum of your praise and criticism.
Richelle E. Goodrich
You think you know me, but I'm not sure that even I know who I am anymore.
Nicholas Sparks
Separate yourself from the lies and illusions which are not you.
Bryant McGill
Loyalty is not loyalty unless one clings to it in the face of adversity.
Lisa Tawn Bergren
Everything ends, and Everything matters. Everything matters not in spite of the end of you and all that you love, but because of it. Everything is all you’ve got…and after Everything is nothing. So you were wise to welcome Everything, the good and the bad alike, and cling to it all. Gather it in. Seek the meaning in sorrow and don’t ever turn away, not once, from here until the end. Because it is all the same, it is all unfathomable, and it is all infinitely preferable to the one dreadful alternative.
Ron Currie Jr.