Quotes by American Authors - Page 96

A brand is a person.
Richie Norton
I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.
Ulysses S. Grant
Thank God I have seen an orange sky with purple clouds.
Erica Goros
This beach I voyage on leads me through the earth's immortal consistencies. Each form I encounter obeys the principles of perfection and trial, a timelessness in the making. The proportions of truth are at hand. Existence is celebrated in a splinter of driftwood, worn by wind-driven sand into the shape of an arrow. The onshore waves jostle each other, busy with their eternal changing, mixing crab shells, sand grains, and fish bones together. The trim little shorebirds feeding at the water's edge are acutely aware of one another, under the light and shadow leaning and drifting over all awareness. Wither own mysteries behind their beady eyes, their quick, advantageous movements, they follow the great, unifying sea." ~ John Hay. Bird of Light.
John Hay
Everything and everyone is your teacher unless you are a poor student.
Bryant McGill
Much of human progress has involved reducing the time and energy, as well as the number of processes we have to engage in and think about, for each of us to obtain the necessities of life.
Barry Schwartz
Consider it: every person you have ever met, every person will suffer the loss of his friends and family. All are going to lose everything they love in this world. Why would one want to be anything but kind to them in the meantime?
Sam Harris
He glanced at James before continuing. “If you're going to survive this, the first rule you need to learn is never count on anyone but yourself. Never. People make mistakes, and the zombies are fast. They don't need to sleep or eat anything but us. Don't leave your protection in the hands of someone else.
Rose Wynters
Three men sat around a table. All were muscled and similarly greasy and easily identifiable as scum. As he breached the entrance all three were moving, drawing their own guns in surprise.Only one got off a shot.
G.S. Jennsen
I know that in life there will be sickness, devastation, disappointments, heartache - it's a given. What's not a given is the way you choose to get through it all. If you look hard enough, you can always find the bright side.
Rashida Jones
Because any guilt the sizeof a speck of dust, or shame,can crush even the best of men,in mountains of weight
Phil Volatile
One of the most important qualities of a president is the ability to inspire, to bring people together for the common good.
DaShanne Stokes
I don't give up. That makes me incredibly resilient or maybe stupid or just plain stubborn. Whichever...
Destiny Booze
They sought the pain they knew so well and called it love.
David W. Earle
Why don’t you focus on where you’re going and less on where you came from?
Amy Harmon
How naive Lore had been, despite being the daughter of a father no one spoke of, despite the strange, incomplete conversations at her mother’s deathbed; how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn’t tell, or told stories that weren’t entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form.
Pamela Erens
When something does not insist on being noticed when we aren't grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an event we take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick
...I didn't want to be a passenger on someone else's motorcycle.I wanted to be the one riding that motherfucker.
Lily Brooks-Dalton
The scariest thing about distance is that you don’t know whether they’ll miss you or forget you.
Nicholas Sparks
It may be possible that Leukemia in children is linked to the location of the fuse board and the electrical meter on the home.
Steven Magee
Our schedules are so hectic we can’t get everything done, or else we are bored and restless, constantly looking for something to amuse us. We are the most frantic generation in history—and also the most entertained. The Bible tells us that both extremes are wrong.
Billy Graham
To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Bernard Baruch
The enemy was not the Klan but the inside-outside lock that racism and classism had on the minds of the people: It operated from the inside through self-hate and self-doubt, and from the outside through the police, carnivorous landlords, and the welfare system.
Junius Williams
To dream of a magical world is one thing. To be told it exists is quite another.
Barbara Kloss
Physical symptoms such as muscle tension, back problems, stomach distress, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, obesity or maybe even hypertension can be caused by suppressing your emotions. Suppressed anger may also cause you to overreact to people and situations or to act inappropriately. Unexpressed anger can cause you to become irritable, irrational, and prone to emotional outbursts and episodes of depression.
Beverly Engel
There are some things that, once lost, no amount of money can regain. Thus to justify the destruction of an ancient forest on the grounds that it will earn us substantial export income is problematic, even if we could invest that income and increase its value from year to year; for no matter how much we increase its value, its could never buy back the link with the past represented by the forest.
Peter Singer
Do you want to have to tell the doctor at the emergency room that the reason your wound opened up was because you couldn't keep your you know what in your pants." "First of all, I don't think I'd have to say you know what in front of the doctor.
Mary J. Williams
There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.
José N Harris
The only antidote to the unnerving effects of such incoherence is integrity. People and organizations with integrity are wholly themselves. No aspect of self stands different or apart. At their center is clarity, not conflict. When they go inside to find themselves, there is only one self there.
Margaret Wheatley
Theresa, I know there's a part of you that believes you can change someone, but the reality is that you can't. You can change yourself, and Garrett can change himself, but you can't do it for him.
Nicholas Sparks
No matter whether the Constitution follows the flag or not the Supreme Court follows the election returns.
Finley Peter Dunne
Building a museum case and filling it with types of mussels is one way of knowing mussels; but on the shore, a mussel leads to a crab or a curious stone, which leads to another thing and eventually leads back to mussels, which is another and perhaps a more far-reaching way to know mussels. The sea that always seems like a metaphor, but one that is always moving, cannot be fixed, like a heart that is a like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something altogether different and like everything at once. One thing leads to another, and this is the treasure that always runs through your fingers and never runs out.
Rebecca Solnit
Walking under Dusk, Moonlit leaf shadows were cast on my skin from the trees above, every step I took was taking a step deeper into magic. Silent whispers of mystical mouthes pulling me in deeper. Then the lights from inside the house turned on. A few seconds later, the fence lights went on. Just like that, the leafy ghosts on my skin ran away and the faery voices ran home. It seems like the creations of man kill magic in so many ways— even the light bulb does this! Oh to be a race of people designing magical things, if someone could capture pieces of Moonlight and place it in a jar; or other things like that, then we could stop killing the magic and be filled with it instead. Or maybe we are already always filled with it. It's the bringing out that we have trouble with. Stop being a doorknob, darling! Be magical, instead!
C. JoyBell C.
Juan gave Bones the most admiring look he’d bestowed on him yet. “You talked her into going without panties all these years? Madre de Dios, now that’s impressive. I could learn a great deal from you, amigo.
Jeaniene Frost
Archer tries not to think of his own state of purity, physically unsullied, yet now spiritually beyond redemption, his thoughts plagued by lithe limbs and brilliant blue eyes. Doctor Archer has never really understood women, nor has he ever had time for courtship; this is a sacrifice he has willingly made for his career. He thought - believed - for most of his adult life that his vocation was to tend the sick of mind. Romance was a frivolity, carnal urges something he successfully sublimated, resisting the drive to spoil himself. Now, in the overbearing loneliness of his 4am bed he touches himself in secret, panting and hungry and stunned by shame
John T. Fuller
Are you seeking to be offended?
Asa Don Brown
If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.
Mark Glamack
There are different kinds of darkness,” Rhys said. I kept my eyes shut. “There is the darkness that frightens, the darkness that soothes, the darkness that is restful.” I pictured each. “There is the darkness of lovers, and the darkness of assassins. It becomes what the bearer wishes it to be, needs it to be. It is not wholly bad or good.
Sarah J Maas
What allowed me to take that first step, to choose growth and risk rejection? In the fixed mindset, I had needed my blame and bitterness. It made me feel more righteous, powerful, and whole than thinking I was at fault. The growth mindset allowed me to give up the blame and move on. The growth mindset gave me a mother.
Carol S. Dweck
Change is the end result of all true learning.
Leo Buscaglia
Always be positive, enjoy the music of rain on a rainy day.
Debasish Mridha
Indelible, adj.That first night, you took your finger and pointed to the top of my head, then traced a line between my eyes, down my nose, over my lips, my chin, my neck, to the center of my chest. It was so surprising. I knew I would never mimic it. That one gesture would be yours forever.
David Levithan
I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Hunter S. Thompson
There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.
Carl Sagan
There’s a Chinese word that means “soul sister,” and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Please don’t make it worse by condemning yourself. There is no choice that would have left you feeling no guilt. Every time I watch Adam struggle to speak, every time I see another child laugh and point at him, every time I watch his face fall as he realizes he is not going to be treated like the other kids, I feel wrenched by guilt just as you did when you heard my story. Life is hard. We make the best choices we can. Condemnation, whether it comes from around you or inside you, only robs the world of another dram of compassion. God knows, we need all the compassion we can get. If you promise to try to forgive yourself, I’ll try to forgive myself as well. I think, in my heart of hearts, that there is nothing for either one of us to forgive.
Martha Beck
There is communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
M.F.K. Fisher
You pass as a guy; I, as pregnant. Our waiter cheerfully tells us about his family, expresses delight in ours. On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male,” mine, more and more “female.” But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.
Maggie Nelson
And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess.
Art Buchwald
Reading wasn't an attempt to educate myself. It was my chief escape from a world that, although gorgeous in landscape and rich with mountain culture, didn't provide what I needed—the promise of adventure, a life beyond the perimeter of hills. I often fantasized that I'd been adopted and had mysterious powers such as flying or teleportation. Books offered the promise of a world in which misfits like me could flourish. Within the pages of a novel, I was unafraid: of my father, of dogs, snakes, and the bully across the creek; of older boys who drove hot rods close enough to make me jump in the ditch; of armed men parked near the bootlegger.
Chris Offutt
In some ways, I am able to feel more like a part of my family while I am missing them. It's normal to feel lonely when you are away from your loved ones, but it's queer to feel lonely while surrounded by family.
Rebecca Behrens
Nations tend to see the other side's war atrocities as systemic and indicative of their culture and their own atrocities as justified or the acts of stressed combatants. In my travels, I sense a smoldering resentment towards WWII Japanese behavior among some Americans. Ironically, these feelings are strongest among the younger American generation that did not fight in WWII. In my experience, the Pacific vets on both sides have made their peace. And in terms of judgments, I will leave it to those who were there. As Ray Gallagher, who flew on both atomic missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki argues, "When you're not at war you're a good second guesser. You had to live those years and walk that mile.
James D. Bradley
Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!
Harriet Beecher Stowe
She'll be a fierce woman, that one. It'll take a hell of a man to love her right. Be like living with a thunderstorm. Same as her mother. A fierce woman. Force of nature. The kind of woman you just hand on for the ride. The most exciting and the most heartbreaking woman you could ever meet. They don't know their own minds most of the time, but their hearts are so damn big it hurts em inside.
Brian Doyle
I always thought I was an extrovert until I became a theatre major. Then I realised I just didn't like silence.
Cora Carmack
When my decision for Christ was made . . . I knelt in prayer. I opened my heart and knew for the first time the sweetness and joy of God, of truly being born again . . .I knew in my heart that I was somehow different and changed. That night absolutely changed the direction of my life.
Billy Graham
I just thought I had to do it. You want this boy to like you, right? And he’s so solid, so sure of himself. He knows what he wants: you. Besides, maybe if he touches you, you’ll be real.
George Ella Lyon
If there's a feeling to home, it's this. A place where there are no secrets, where nothing stays buried; not the past and not yourself. Where you can be all the versions of you, see it all reflected back at you as you walk the same stairs, the same halls, the same rooms. Feel the ghost of your mother as you sit at the kitchen table, hear the words of your father circling round and round after dinner, and your brother stopping by, wishing you'd be a little better, a little stronger.... It's four walls echoing back everything you've ever been and everything you've ever done, and it's the people who stay despite it all. Through it all. For it all.
Megan Miranda
There's always the same amount of good luck and bad luck in the world. If one person doesn't get the bad luck, somebody else will have to get it in their place. There's always the same amount of good and evil, too. We can't eradicate evil, we can only evict it, force it to move across town. And when evil moves, some good always goes with it. But we can never alter the ratio of good to evil. All we can do is keep things stirred up so neither good nor evil solidifies. That's when things get scary. Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.
Tom Robbins
I don't hate anybody," Tobias said calmly. "It's strange, but right now, I don't even hate the Yeerks. It's like, they're trying to survive. And we're trying to survive. I'm not really sure why it has to be an either-or thing.
K.A. Applegate
Before entering into any kind of intimate relationships, whether friendship, familial re-connection, or romance, the idea of “needing” or “being needed” must be eliminated. It's harmful to me and others. Need is no kind of foundation for anything. Rather, I choose to be wanted. “Want” is a deliberate choice. Wanting is not based in fear or ego (which are one in the same, I believe). Want comes from recognition of someone else's goodness and loving them for it. Being wanted is unconditional. It does not require emotional games be played, it does not require reparations be made or obligations be met. Being wanted is good, in and of itself.
Jennifer DeLucy