Quotes by American Authors

A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.
Louis L'Amour
Put the fire out? Hell no. What we need to do is stoke it.
Jess Walter
It is less mortifying to believe one's self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.
Edith Wharton
Instead of a bucket list Someday Challenge™ wants you to create your Someday Slate™, a list of the things that you have promised yourself to do, things that you planned to do someday! Completing your Someday Slate™ will get you started on finally living your passion now.
David A. Koop
You gave me a forever within the numbered days and I'm grateful.
John Green
Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised. Bureaus cannot live without a host, being true parasitic organisms. (A cooperative on the other hand can live without the state. That is the road to follow. The building up of independent units to meet needs of the people who participate in the functioning of the unit. A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence.) Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus. (It is thought that the virus is a degeneration from more complex life-form. It may at one time have been capable of independent life. Now has fallen to the borderline between living and dead matter. It can exhibit living qualities only in a host, by using the life of another — the renunciation of life itself, a falling towards inorganic, inflexible machine, towards dead matter.) Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.
William S Burroughs
You can run. You can keep running to the ends of the earth. But I won’t be far behind you.”“Ethan—”“No. I will never be far behind you.” He tipped up my chin so that I could do nothing else but look back into his eyes. “Do the things you need to do. Learn to be a vampire, to be a warrior, to be the soldier you are capable of being. But consider the possibility that I made a mistake I regret—and that I’ll continue to regret that mistake and try to convince you to give me another chance until the earth stops turning.
Chloe Neill
I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since.
Maya Angelou
Empowered Women 101: A confident woman doesn't have to talk a man into loving her. He either loves her completely, not enough or not at all. Regardless, she doesn't settle for less than she deserves.
Shannon L. Alder
Then she stood on tiptoe and kissed him sweetly on the lips, “I promise you a love affair with a sun-bathed Austrian princess beyond anything you imagine—in love, in beauty, in intensity. A love that will power you to the end of our time together. You are going to be a fortunate man, Geoffrey Ashbrook.
Paul A. Myers
If I walked down by different streets to the Jardin du Luxembourg in the afternoon I could walk through the gardens and then go to the Musée du Luxembourg where the great paintings were that have now mostly been transferred to the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume. I went there nearly every day for the Cézannes and to see the Manets and the Monets and the other Impressionists that I had first come to know about in the Art Institute at Chicago. I was learning something from the painting of Cézanne that made writing simple true sentences far from enough to make the stories have the dimensions that I was trying to put in them. I was learning very much from him but I was not articulate enough to explain it to anyone. Besides it was a secret. But if the light was gone in the Luxembourg I would walk up through the gardens and stop in at the studio apartment where Gertrude Stein lived at 27 rue de Fleurus.
Ernest Hemingway
I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.
Cole Porter
I'm saying the American way is to overcome, to conquer, to come out on top. And we do it by spending and eating and screwing our women harder than anyone else. That's all I'm saying.
Neil LaBute
I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. He's very ebullient, as they say. I've heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice that's always very well worth noticing because it's always a bad sign: he doesn't know when to sit down. He's worse than Castro was. He won't shut up. Then he told me that he didn't think the United States landed on the moon and didn't believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. He's a wacko.
Christopher Hitchens
Well, then what the federal government should have done was accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solutions that they wanted presented. They can't even get a phone call returned, Bill. The Dutch—they are known, and the Norwegians—they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills. They offered to help and yet, no, they too, with the proverbial, can't even get a phone call back.
Sarah Palin
There is no such thing as notoriety in the United States these days, let alone infamy. Celebrity is all.
Christopher Hitchens
We trace the hand of the Almighty in framing the constitution of our land, and believe that the Lord raised up men purposely for the accomplishment of this object, raised them up and inspired them to frame the Constitution of the United States
Lorenzo Snow
The new crimes that the US and Israel were committing in Gaza as 2009 opened do not fit easily into any standard category—except for the category of familiarity.
Noam Chomsky
Sylvia Plath is there for me when actual living people upon who I have depended upon my whole life, are not. What I mean to say is, without her words, I'd be exponentially more messed up than I am already.
Arlaina Tibensky
Lane, I will become attached to you. It happens with everyone. Something about my personality makes me latch on to people. First, it was my friend Tina, then Liam, and now you. I’m sorry, but I know it will happen. It already is happening. Now that we’ve had sex, I don’t want you out of my sight.
K. Webster
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
I'm fighting now only for individual captive dolphins and dolphins in general but also for people, for the mind and sensibilities of future generations toward the world itself.
Richard O'Barry
Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.
Kim Edwards
Perfectionist parents seem to operate under the illusion that if they can just get their children to be perfect, they will be a perfect family. They put the burden of stability on the child to avoid facing the fact that they, as parents, cannot provide it. The child fails and becomes the scapegoat for family problems. Once again, the child is saddled with the blame.
Susan Forward
Although stigmatizing attitudes are not limited to mental illness, the public seems to disapprove persons with psychiatric disabilities significantly more than persons with related conditions such as physical illness (34-36). Severe mental illness has been likened to drug addiction, prostitution, and criminality (37,38). Unlike physical disabilities, persons with mental illness are perceived by the public to be in control of their disabilities and responsible for causing them (34,36). Furthermore, research respondents are less likely to pity persons with mental illness, instead reacting to psychiatric disability with anger and believing that help is not deserved (35,36,39)."World Psychiatry. 2002 Feb; 1(1): 16–20.PMCID: PMC1489832Understanding the impact of stigma on people with mental illnessPATRICK W CORRIGAN and AMY C WATSON
Patrick W. Corrigan
Engaged Audience Members are receptive to the messages of dangerous speech and to condoning group-targeted harm, but are not hardliners. For example, they may be easily influenced by charismatic leaders who promise to resolve their grievances, or be receptive to blame narratives. This could be any member of society, but certain types of people (based on demographic or other characteristics) may be disproportionately engaged.
Rachel Hilary Brown
The sky grows dark over the city as Janey tells me her story. Teh beast was supposed to help their community. Something that would look good in a brochure, I suppose. But instead, it cut loose, took out in to the Williamsburg night. Janey and the kids went after it , and when they finally caught up what does it do? The thing ate a hipster.
Daniel José Older
Information can be such a double-edged sword.
Jessiqua Wittman
The next question is how? How does news find us? What you need is a certain critical literacy about the fact that you are almost always subject to an algorithm. The most powerful thing in your world now is an algorithm about which you know nothing about.
Kelly McBride
Safety comes in our nearness to God, not in our distance from our enemies.
Dillon Burroughs
Gloria was still talking, something about how shooting people was in a sense safer than making art, in terms of avoiding serious lapses in taste.
Rachel Kushner
He wraps his arms around me and holds me tight for a few seconds. Hisbreaths tickle my ear, and I close my eyes, letting myself finally relax. Hesmells like wind and sweat and soap, like Tobias and like safety.
Veronica Roth
During my five years on Mauna Kea, workers routinely displayed the symptoms of Cerebral Hypoxia
Steven Magee
Lazy people, the truly lazy people live on information, strategies, ideas, plans and many other criticals, simply to spend one hour of hard work and make the rest feel like a breeze.
Alan Rios
He paused and manufactured a chuckle.
Carl Hiaasen
And he laughs. Not the heavy laughter from before. It’s a great laugh. A deep laugh. One that makes my lips lift. Isaiah, the guy who an hour ago carried himself like a jungle predator, now has the content aura of a lazy cat bathing in the sun.
Katie McGarry
September laughed and her laugh sounded like a roar; as if she had never been able to properly laugh in her whole life, only giggle or chuckle or grin, and now that she could do it right, now that her laughing had grown up and put bells on, it had become the most boisterous, rowdy roar you ever heard.
Catherynne M. Valente
I know what you're doing, though.""I'm glad somebody knows what I'm about, because I seem to have lost my own grasp of it entirely.
Grace Burrowes
Anna, you miss him.” “All the time. I still can’t believe he’s gone.” The words come out in a whoosh, tasting funny in my mouth. No matter how many times I say them, they still feel like a garbled, impossible language. My chest hurts, and I have to hold my breath to keep from inhaling a deep sob. “He was more than your best friend.” I nod absently, forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting that I’m talking to Jayne and not my journal. “I – I mean, he was like a brother to me. You know, like Frankie. Well, she’s the sister. I mean–” Jayne reaches for my hands across the table, shaking her head softly. “Sweetheart, when you say Matt’s name, you have the same look in your eyes that he’d get whenever he’d say yours.
Sarah Ockler
A scientist doesn't know all the answers. Nobody does, not even teachers. But a scientist keeps on trying to find the answers.
Oliver Butterworth
My visage high above your city,Shines like gold, but half as pretty.Arms I've none, but hands I've two:Mondo, mini, black not blue.Climb my stairs and have no fears, All that threatens are my gears.Tucked beneath the mightly wheel,An envelpe shall truth reveal.
Megan Frazer Blakemore
It's a strange city... filled with things that are not obvious.
A.M. Homes
It is not an individual act, architecture. You have to consider your client. Only out of that can you produce great architecture. You cannot work in the abstract.
I.M. Pei
Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires - disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
Bernie S. Siegel
When written in Chinese the word "crisis" is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.
John F Kennedy
Imposing limitations on yourself is cowardly because it protects you from having to try and perhaps failing.
Vladimir Zworykin
Sleep takes off the costume of circumstance arms us with terrible freedom so that every will rushes to deed. A skillful man reads his dreams for his self-knowledge yet not the details but the quality. What part does he play in them - a cheerful manly part or a poor drivelling part? However monstrous and grotesque their apparitions they have a substantial truth.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best and most efficient pharmacy is within your own system.
Robert C. Peale
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.
Abraham Lincoln
The first Sunday I sang in the church choir two hundred people changed their religion.
Fred Allen
The one who cares the most wins. ... That's how I knew I'd end up with everyone else waving the white flags and not me. That's how I knew I'd be the last person standing when it was all over. ... I cared the most.
Roseanne Barr
I've been failing for like ten or eleven years. When it turns it'll turn. Right now I'm just tryin' to squeeze through a very tight financial period get the movie out and put my things in order.
Francis Ford Coppola
Mother: It's broccoli dear. Child: I say it's spinach and I say the hell with it.
Carl Rose
Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!
John Quincy Adams
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When people are free to do as they please they usually imitate each other. Originality is deliberate and forced and partakes of the nature of a protest.
Eric Hoffer
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then if ever come perfect days Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune And over it softly her warm ear lays.
James Russell Lowell
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine
A man is only as good as what he loves.
Saul Bellow