Quotes by American Authors - Page 692

That is surely childhood's end, when you look at a thing like a rabbit needing skinned and have to say: "Nobody else is going to do this.
Barbara Kingsolver
Growth is achieved when truth is revealed.
Molly Friedenfeld
He took the hand that wasn’t holding the bou­quet of wildflowers and stared at it, holding it so tightly that she thought he might crack her bones. Then his hold gentled. He slipped a gold ring onto her finger and lifted his gaze to hers.“I’m not a brave man; I’ll never be a hero, but I love you more than life itself, and I will until the day I die. With you by my side, I’m a better man than I’ve ever been alone. I’m scared to death that I’ll let you down, but I won’t run this time. I’ll stand firm and face the challenge and work hard to see that you never have any regrets. You told me once that you wanted to share a corner of my dream. Without you, Amelia, I have no dream. With you, I have everything I could ever dream of wanting.”Tears burned her eyes as he glanced back at the preacher. “I’m done.”-Houston to Amelia as his wedding vow.
Lorraine Heath
New York, of course, is to be in endless surreal situations where a fifty-thousand dollar, gun-metal Mercedez pulls up into a puddle of blood, and out steps a twenty-five karat blonde transvestite with a two dollar wristwatch.
Tom Waits
(...) always regretted that good memory often prevents us from thinking for ourselves.
Frank Harris
Once in a great while, she was distressed by the way she looked. As she was rounding the bend to forty she would write to Avis DeVoto that whenever she read Vogue she "felt like a frump....but I suppose that is the purpose of all of it, to shame people out of their frumpery so they will go out and buy 48 pairs of red shoes, have a facial, pat themselves with deodorizers, buy a freezer, and put up the new crispy window curtains with a draped valence."Julia was able to deconstruct the disingenuous motives that drive women's magazines with the ease she normally reserved for deboning a duck, seeing quite clearly that while ostensibly offering inspiration and useful advice, the stories and articles quietly pummel the reader's sense of self, the better to drive her into the arms of the advertisers.
Karen Karbo
To wish for the happiest days is to wish for a season of sorrow; for it is only after prolonged, wintry darkness that the summer sun appears to shine at its brightest.
Richelle E. Goodrich
But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H.P. Lovecraft
A child thinks twenty shillings and twenty years can scarce ever be spent.
Benjamin Franklin
Lies sound like facts to those who've been conditioned to mis-recognize the truth.
DaShanne Stokes
Breathing became a painful chore. Her lips turned down while her warm fingers caressed my cheek. That touch typically brought me to my knees, but now it cut me
Katie McGarry
A true friend is one you can go extended periods without seeing or talking to, yet the moment that you are back in touch, it's like no time has passed at all.
Ellie Wade
The written revelation of God is in the world, but men heed it not. Instead, they look for knowledge where it is not to be found.
Edward J. Young
Pink,You are gentle and sweet just like this rose. When your rose pink lips smiled at me that first time I remembered how to smile.~Riley
Ottilie Weber
He shrugs. "Doesn't help to waste my time thinking about would've-beens."Laila whispers, "He says to the girl with a mind full of them.
Kasie West
I stumbled into the living room, and Thomas handed me a bottle of whiskey. They all had some in a glass"You told them?" I asked Trenton, my voice broken. Trenton nodded.I collapsed to my knees, and my brothers surrounded me, placing their hands on my head and shoulders for support.
Jamie McGuire
In your own life it's important to know how spectacular you are.
Steve Maraboli
The wise know their days are numbered and act accordingly.
Michael Hyatt
She borrowed in harmony and paid back in war
Charmaine J.Forde
I stopped living a long time ago, in order to simply exist. Now I am trying to leave existence, in order to step into nihility.
Lionel Suggs
True friendship has no checks or balances. Once someone starts Keeping Score, the game is over.
Kate McGahan
We now expect more from technology and less from each other.
Sherry Turkle
Is this a kissing book?
William Goldman
[Being rejected] hurt, 'cause what turned me on in sex was believing that they knew me, that I'd found somebody to understand.
Chris Kraus
Our actions speak for us & they speak loudly.
Allan Lokos
It is not very difficult to build world peace. We just have to be kind to each other and treat each other with great care.
Debasish Mridha
The suits love their numbers, Malone thinks. This new management breed of cops are like the sabermetrics baseball people. They believe the numbers say it all, and when the numbers don't say what they want them to, they massage them like Koreans on Eighth Avenue until they get a happy ending.
Don Winslow
A fool always finds something to complain about, and a wise person always finds something to appreciate.
Debasish Mridha
When all the public eye sees are headscarves instead of individual stories, our community is collectively tokenized. It creates the perception that opportunity is limited and only a rare few of us can make it. Whenever that happens to an already marginalized community, it pits its own members in a competition against one another instead of against the restrictive frameworks that put us in that position in the first place. The first hijabi whatever won't eliminate Islamophobia just as the first black president hasn't eliminated racism, though both are signifiers of some type of progress — symbols of ascending beyond adversity.
Amani Al-Khatahtbeh
People like you must create. If you don't create, Bernadette, you will become a menace to society.
Maria Semple
Sometimes I think it is a great mistake to have matter that can think and feel. It complains so. By the same token, though, I suppose that boulders and mountains and moons could be accused of being a little too phlegmatic.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences - deep, corrosive, obstinate differences - radiating painful roots into the community and into the family, and the nature of the individual. These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice.
Lyndon B. Johnson
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on TheeAnd I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Robert Frost
All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace.
Truman Capote
(Many religions, from Judaism to Zoroastrianism, use light and fire as symbols for the presence of God, perhaps because light, like God, cannot be seen but permits us to see everything there is, perhaps because fire liberates the energy hidden in a log of wood or a lump of coal just as God liberates the potential energy to do good things that is hidden in every human being, just as God will be the fire that burns within Moses, enabling him to do the great things he will go on to do, but not consuming him in the process.)
Harold S. Kushner
Once a person falls in the fields of love, all the rules are already broken; the lover becomes open and exalted in ways that transcend the local issues as well as the commonly held beliefs. Love, like genuine devotion, will find a way. Where duty becomes replaced with love, a greater and deeper faith will blossom forth. For the deepest meaning of “belief” refers to being loyal to what the heart already loves. As people used to say, “What the heart loves is the cure.” The cure for healing the wounds and conflicts between faiths and systems of belief involves awakening to the unique ways that each heart carries devotion and love. When followed far enough, simple belief can transform into wisdom; raw passions can become a greater compassion that trusts what resides in one’s heart and even in the hearts of others. Until the heart opens and the eyes begin to see there is always the danger of blindness and narrowness and the tendency to hold onto narrow ways of being.
Michael Meade
Christ's miracles were not the suspension of the natural order but the restoration of the natural order. They were a reminder of what once was prior to the fall and a preview of what will eventually be a universal reality once again--a world of peace and justice, without death, disease, or conflict.
Timothy J. Keller
Notorious Lucifer, King of Hell, claimed to know love again.
J.M. Darhower
Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
H.L. Mencken
I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone’s life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager’s first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can’t have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can’t play it safe. Great writing isn’t safe.
Dan Alatorre
Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment and it helped me. It has always helped me.
Edith Wharton
Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.
Roy T. Bennett
My ears are too beeg for my head. My head ees too beeg for my body. I am not a Siamese cat ... I AM A CHIHUAHUA!"
Judy Schachner
It seemed I'd always been chasing after something, anything that moved -a car, a bird, a blowing leaf -anything that might lead me into some more lit place, some unknown land downriver. I had not even the vaguest notion of the broken world I was living in, what society could do with you.
Bob Dylan
I have spent hours and hours watching elephants, and to come to understand what emotional creatures they are...it's not just a species facing extinction, it's massive individual suffering.
Mike Bond
And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head.
Victoria Kahler
When we were almost to the other campus, I felt the weird nausea hit me. I called a warning to Christian, just as a Strigoi grabbed him. But Christian was fast. Flames wreathed the Strigoi's head. He screamed and released Christian, trying frantically to put the flames out. The Strigoi never saw me coming with the stake. The whole thing took under a minute. Christian and I exchanged looks.Yeah. We were badasses.
Richelle Mead
No low-trust society will ever produce sustained innovation.
Thomas L. Friedman
Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.
William Allen White
We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls...
Gregory Maguire
I want to have the heart and mind of a queen,” she whispered. “I want it more than anything. But I’m only pretending. I can’t find the feeling of it inside
Kristin Cashore
Our life contains a thousand springs,And dies if one be gone.Strange that a harp of thousand stringsShould keep in tune so long.
William Billings
I've learned ruthless concentration. I can write under any circumstances ... street noises loud talk music you name it.
Sylvia Porter
Repentance in Greek means something much closer to "thinking differently afterward" than it does "changing your cheating ways." Of course repentance can look like a prostitute becoming a librarian, but it can also look like a prostitute simply saying, "OK, I'm a sex worker and I don't know how to change that, but I can come here and receive bread and wine and I can hold onto the love of God without being deemed worthy of it by anyone but God.
Nadia Bolz-Weber
If you are loving, you will attract love. If you are kind, you will attract kindness. If your heart is at peace, you will create an aura of peacefulness around you.
Debasish Mridha
Stealing is good, honest work," Said the theif, puffing out his chest. "Well, not honest, strictly speaking," he admitted after a moment. "Or actually good.
Adam Rex
I have something to tell you.""How, you have something to tell me?""You have understood me exactly.""Well, I am listening.""Listening? Then, you wish me to tell you?""Yes, that is it. I am listening, and therefore I wish you to tell me.""Shall I tell you now?""No.
Steven Brust
And just so you know—that winter forest we walked into first? That was from Through the Looking Glass too. Hey, if you’re going to saddle me with the blame for your overconsumption, at least get the book right.
Elle Lothlorien
I turn to Willa Cather’s quote: Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
Cameron Conaway
He felt the long light body, warm against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against him, magically, by a simple touching of flanks, of shoulders and of feet, making an alliance against death with him.
Ernest Hemingway