Quotes by American Authors - Page 108

You need to make a decision - are you are an imitator or an innovator?
Stewart Stafford
Let’s end the notion that ideas have no value unless they turn into a business or have some other practical use. Save them all in a beautiful book like Leonardo did. You might want to give them away someday, perhaps to someone who needs an idea. Or your great-great-grandchildren might love knowing what a fascinating mind you had. Or your biographer might be very happy after you’re gone.
Barbara Sher
Bringing a novel to light - revealing the form and cadence, shadows and demeanor of a protagonist constructed from thin air - linking scenes and synchronicity across translucent time - holding up a glass brimming with chilled, never-tasted liquid, then sipping from it with intoxicated focus - allowing lovers to make a perilous mess of things, fall apart and nakedly come back together again - looking through conjured windows deep into someone else’s snow-bound solitude, feeling utterly alone yet being all-connected: this is not writing. It’s world-creating.It’s raw, exposed dreaming. It’s humbling. At first too personal and intimate to share, it evolves like a child into a life of its own until I have no say in what comes next. It’s what I wake at 4am to say Yes to, the spinning possibility of a new story relentlessly commanding me to write it down so it can whirl in your experience.
Laurie Perez
Originality is the most deadly mirage in all of art. You can chase it from now until doomsday, and you'll only find yourself lost and dying of thirst.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
The artistic methods of poetry, painting, photography, and writing share certain commonalities of deep composition: spirit, rhythm, thought, and scenery.
Kilroy J. Oldster
Creativity is like the ocean: sometimes it is an unstoppable wave bursting forth, crashing onto the shore, and overwhelmingly flowing with no hope of restraint; other times it is completely still, lingering aimlessly and endlessly, seemingly devoid of any inspiration.
Ken Poirot
Innovation basically involves making obsolete that which you did before.
Jay Abraham
Creativity is not so much a boundless well, but an all-you-can-eat buffet of elements for your creative endeavor.Eventually you've eaten your fill, and it's time to digest and then make something.But at some point, it will be time to return to the restaurant.
Vera Nazarian
One of the strangest things is the act of creation.You are faced with a blank slate—a page, a canvas, a block of stone or wood, a silent musical instr
Vera Nazarian
Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential. In a way, the power of dissent is the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives. “Authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating,” [Charlan] Nemeth [a professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley] says. “It wakes us right up.
Jonah Lehrer
It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.
E.A. Bucchianeri
Keeing busy" is the remedy for all the ills in America. It's also the means by which the creative impulse is destroyed.
Joyce Carol Oates
When you have wit of your own, it's a pleasure to credit other people for theirs.
Criss Jami
Creative people are often found either disagreeable or intimidating by mediocrities.
Criss Jami
Somebody said once or wrote, once: 'We're all of us children in a vast kindergarten trying to spell God's name with the wrong alphabet blocks!
Tennessee Williams
Don't settle for less than God's best for you".~R. Alan Woods [2013]
R. Alan Woods
When you have something this good, you keep it. Forever. And that's all the magic there is to it.
Nadège Richards
Don't let someone keep putting out the flame God keeps re-lighting, we all have a purpose. As a wing to a bird. As wind that goes the destiny over the sea.
Anthony Liccione
You don’t have to say everything to be a light. Sometimes a fire built on a hill will bring interested people to your campfire.
Shannon L. Alder
Human freedom brings with it the burden of choice and of its consequences. As humankind is akin to claim for its own special privilege a certain unique destiny not afforded with equal measure to other organisms, so must it further—if paradoxically so—entertain the assumption that, in spite of this glorious determinism, there persists nonetheless a thread of free will—or, at the very least, some vague delusion thereof—woven seamlessly into the tapestry of collective experience. Of course, this conception that destiny is to be forged by one’s own hands more often engenders greater restriction than it does greater extension to the potential of human happiness.
Ashim Shanker
Now that this destiny was about to happen, every instinct within him fought against it, realizing he had been fetishizing suicide.
Thomm Quackenbush
Dark rumblings inside told him he was in a tremendous amount of trouble. He didn't know how it was going to manifest or when but it was coming, sure as Zeta would break the horizon before everyone else arose from their sleepzone. If they hauled him away, then what?
Marcha A. Fox
I feel like a paper cut just waiting to bleed.
Jennifer Elisabeth
I wish that love could be broken down the way it breaks me down.
Jennifer Elisabeth
Time' is the most threatening four letter word.
Jennifer Elisabeth
We’ve been so busy with these things we let ourselves think actually mattered, but they don’t. There’s no such thing as the right career, or morality, or destiny, or fate. There’s only life. And whether you honor it or ignore it. It’s ironic, but in trying to find God we’ve been ignoring life.
Trevor D. Richardson
Stop believing the false hope that "if it’s meant to be” it will happen. If that were true, everyone would be content, wealthy, fit and have great relationships. You must plan, act, persevere, make better choices, know your value and never, ever accept less than you truly deserve. It's not up to chance, it's up to you.
Rob Liano
What matters most, is not how my end happens, or if it happens now. What I care about in this instant, is that she knows how much I love her—that I lived long enough to have her love me back.
Emm Cole
What is the American fetish about highways?They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.But what is after them?They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress.
Ishmael Reed
Love of God and people will pave roads where there once were none.
Shannon L. Alder
That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.
Robin Hobb
I have always felt like a pawn... My skin color's been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that.
Gregory Maguire
Resign your destiny to higher powers.
William James
Our ability to choose is sacred. It’s what makes humans special.
Mark Andrew Poe
Our Master can see it all. If you drive down a long curvy road, you don’t see the twists and turns until you are on top of them. But when you see things from a much higher perspective, you can see the whole road and the twists and the turns and the beginning and the end. In Heaven we can see where you are in relation to where you’re going and we can make things happen along the way at the intersections of life. We can create the right time and the right place and we can already see how it all ends. We can see the whole story of your life while you are living it in little bits and pieces.
Kate McGahan
There will always be thosewho say you are too young and delicateto make anything happen for yourself.They don't see the part of you that smolders.Don't let their doubting drown outthe sound of your own heartbeat.You are the first drop of rain in a hurricane.Your bravery builds beyond you.You are needed by all the little girlsstill living in secret, writing oceansmade of monsters, andthrowing like lightning.You don't need to grow upto find greatness.You are so much stronger than the worldhas ever believed you could be.The world is waiting for youto set it on fire. Trust in yourselfand burn.
Clementine von Radics
Please don't talk to me like I'm crazy. I've been accused of personality disorders enough this week, thanks. You know I've slept with girls before and didn't get attached.
Pat Shand
I'm not letting the world - or anyone in it - determine my fate. Not anymore, at least. - Ginny
Jackson Pearce
Together they spent their whole lives waiting for their luck to change, as though luck were some fabulous tide that would one day flood and consecrate the marshes of our island, christening us in the iridescent ointments of a charmed destiny.
Pat Conroy
I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.
Aberjhani
What if destiny doesn't care?
Scott Westerfeld
Sometimes you don't get to choose your partner. Life chooses it for you.
C.M. Stunich
Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.
Gail Tsukiyama
Your own guilt is your own fault.
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
Sometimes I feel like one of those sliding tile puzzles. I just get so dang close to what I want to see in the mirror and who I want to be... but then I have to completely jumble up the pieces to try to get even closer.
Erica Goros
Five Truths About Your Inner Voice:1. It is here, always available, wherever you are, however you feel, whatever you have done.2. It is solely on your side.3. It knows what's absolutely right for you.4. It is your friend, your ally, your guide, your ultimate supporter. 5. It is always with you and for you. Whenever you're feeling perplexed, uneasy, anxious, mad, frustrated, sick, or any other other way you don't want to feel, ask your Inner Voice. Listen.
Noelle Sterne
When you assess your own life, consider it with the eye of a gardener. Underneath the surface lies rich, fertile soil waiting to nurture the seeds you sow. Even more than you can imagine will grow there if given a chance.
Steve Goodier
Be your OWN celebrity!
Jamie McCall
Good advice is not often served in our favorite flavor.
Tim Fargo
Truth changes with the season of our emotions. It is the shadow that moves with the phases of our inner sun. When the nights falls, only our perception can guess where it hides in the dark. Within every solar system of the soul lies a plan of what truth is--- the design God has created, in our own unique story. This is as varying as the constellations, and as turning as the tide. It is not one truth we live to, but many. If we ever hope to determine if there is such a thing as truth, apart from cultural and personal preferences, we must acknowledge that we are then aiming to discover something greater than ourselves, something that transcends culture and individual inclinations. Some say that we must look beyond ourselves and outside of ourselves. However, we don’t need to look farther than what is already in each other. If there was any great plan from a higher power it is a simplistic, repetitious theme found in all religions; the basic core importance to unity comes from shared theological and humanistic virtues. Beyond the synagogue, mosques, temples, churches, missionary work, church positions and religious rituals comes a simple “message of truth” found in all of us, that binds theology---holistic virtues combined with purpose is the foundation of spiritual evolution. The diversity among us all is not divided truth, but the opportunity for unity through these shared values. Truth is the framework and roadmap of positive virtues. It unifies diversity when we choose to see it and use it. It is simple message often lost among the rituals, cultural traditions and socializing that goes on behind the chapel doors of any religion or spiritual theology. As we fight among ourselves about what religion, culture or race is right, we often lose site of the simple message any great orator has whispered through time----a simplistic story explaining the importance of virtues, which magically reemphasizes the importance of loving one another through service.
Shannon L. Alder
Confidence comes from crossing thresholds.
Kamal Ravikant
Nobody's better than you and you're no better than anybody.
Mary Mihalic
You gotta make it a priority to make your priorities a priority.
Richie Norton
There is a difference between failing and failure. Failing is trying something that you learn doesn't work. Failure is throwing in the towel and giving up.
Jay Samit
The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.
Jay Samit
To be successful, innovation is not just about value creation, but value capture.
Jay Samit
What is it we are questing for? It is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. Questing for it is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that's more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.
Joseph Campbell
The only way to consistently perform at your potential is to ask: Am I better than I was yesterday?
Chris Matakas
My growth as a human being has been directly proportional to my growth as a marital artist.
Chris Matakas
To have a different life you have be a different person. You have to do what you haven't done. You have to become the person that fits that dream. But most of all, you have to realize that if you don't step into your story it becomes the moral of the story. Your inaction is a lesson you leave to your kids-- I was too afraid to change.
Shannon L. Alder