Quotes by American Authors - Page 13

We live with this tortured feeling that we must create that which in reality we have the privilege of finding.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
Don't be discouraged if people don't see your vision, your harvest. All they see from their perspective is that you're watering a whole lot of dirt. They don't SEE what seeds you've been planting with blood, sweat, tears and lack of sleep. Make sure you don't abandon or neglect it because "they" don't see it. You have to KNOW and believe for yourself. They don't see the roots and what's budding under the dirt. But it's okay, because it's NOT meant for them to see it. While you wait, MASTER it. You continue to do YOUR work and have unwavering faith! Remember why you started planting in the first place. Your harvest WILL come!
Yvonne Pierre
I can FEEL her next to me. This UNION. Of WARMTH. Of CARING. Of the INDESCRIBABLE. As if there were NO PARTING and NEVER could be.
Carew Papritz
In the modern Christian attempt to take a stand as Christ did, and maybe for others, win the approval of the world, the Christian will often think that it consists of targeting and demoralizing fellow Christians and only fellow Christians. It is one thing to stand against religious hypocrisy when one sees it, but it is another to go on snorting at anything or anyone who might seem 'too Christian' to us. The irony is that by doing this we are further advocating hypocrisy and 'half-hearted Christians'.
Criss Jami
Anyone who feels to much or radiates extremity gets very lonely.
Chris Kraus
Sacrifice is a passion that unleashes everything away from us so that it can be drawn into everyone around us.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
The greater ignorance towards a country is not ignoring what its politicians have to say, it is ignoring what the inmates in its prisons have to say.
Criss Jami
We should be sure that in our pursuit of happiness and positivity, we do not lose our ability to experience the other side of life, as well. Feelings of grief and respect for the departed, are honourable thoughts to have and honourable feelings to feel. In seeking happiness, we must not be so afraid of sorrow, that we lose the ability to cope with it properly. There is a healthy way to cope with both sorrow and joy; both need to be looked straight in the face, in the eyes.
C. JoyBell C.
It is very normal for one ugly weed to not want to stand alone.
Suzy Kassem
My wakeup call wasn’t some light switch of empowerment. From as early as preschool I feared that if I didn’t grow up to be the pretty princess men fawned over, I was a failure. That mentality was my disease. It got me raped. It made me feel dirty and devalued because my cherry wasn’t popped on a bed of rose petals. It fueled an adolescence juggling starvation and vomiting until my throat bled out and my stomach acid burned through the plumbing. It made me snort coke, smoke meth, and routinely gulp down narcotic petri dishes in hopes of obtaining hallucinogenic intimacy with junkie boyfriends. But most of all, it made me waste my youth chasing, obsessing over, fighting for, worshipping, clinging to, and crying over one after another loser. At some point, I just quit giving a fuck.
Maggie Georgiana Young
Black Girls… Beautiful in EVERY shade and size. We’ve got that special something! Our melanin is exquisitely beautiful! Love & embrace the skin that you’re in. Our skin tones represent beauty. Light, brown, and dark skinned girls are equally gorgeous!
Stephanie Lahart
Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties?
Roman Payne
This is God's universe and he is the master gardener of all. If we were to eliminate all colors in his garden,then what would be a rainbow with only one color? Or a garden with only one kind of flower? Why would the Creator create a vast assortment of plants, ethnicities, and animals, if only one beast or seed is to dominate all of existence?
Suzy Kassem
Doing the things you hate is living in a world of sin. Hell is staying in the place Jesus saved you from. That is, to live on your own, without God.
J.R. Rim
It was uncontrollable, overpowered by others, these colors within me, staring out at a black and white world; without spurning about, wanting to rule, too much negligence, they left me no choice, but to surrender. It was time, had to crash the lightning, and bow to the rain, where promises have broken, and pain still reigns. Had to give up myself and bring life to the world, had to. Dye
Anthony Liccione
I'm a lion in a strange land.
Criss Jami
Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?"Which was a ten on the "imbecilic question" scale of one to ten. Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?"Any nausea? Headache?" Yep. And it's standing here talking to me.
James Patterson
Don’t think too small about what God could do in your life—be prepared for God to do a big thing.
Stormie Omartian
The strength we find within ourselves gives us endurance and perseverance power.
Ellen J. Barrier
The secret to unseating great power, is not to move the other direction, but to compete directly against their goals.
Bryant McGill
Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power.
Glenn Greenwald
We have all heard the phrase "information is power" and in the world of social media, information is abundant. I started thinking...we are some well informed peopled on a myriad of topics but is it the information that is power or is the true power in what we do with the information? I think information is a tool and sometimes that tool falls into hands that have no clue how to use it; rendering it powerless.
Sanjo Jendayi
Regarding solar power systems, the bigger the system is, the more likely it may go on fire.
Steven Magee
Women's curiosity was given a negative connotation, whereas men were called investigative. Women were called nosy, whereas men were called inquiring. In reality, the trivialization of women's curiosity so that it seems like nothing more than irksome snooping denies women's insight, hunches, and intuitions. It denies all her senses. It attempts to attack her fundamental power.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
If I could put my brain in her body, the world would be mine for the taking.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
How absurd it was that in all seven kingdoms, the weakest and most vulnerable of people - girls, women - went unarmed and were taught nothing of fighting, while the strong were trained to the highest reaches of their skill.
Kristin Cashore
Your mind is the canvas upon which you are the artist. What will you paint on your canvas today? Will you draw a stick figure or create a masterpiece...?
James A. Murphy
God is up to something, but you will never know unless you figure out the difference between who is the messenger carrying your future and who is the person holding you back.
Shannon L. Alder
Changing your mind can move you into another dimension. Passages materialize exposing a hidden world that was there all along.
Bryant McGill
When we do cross paths with people whose beliefs and attitudes conflict with our own, we are rarely challenged.
Thomas Gilovich
More often than not, people who are obsessed with their desires and feelings are generally unhappier in life vs. people that refocus their attention on service to others or a righteous cause. Have you ever heard someone say their life sucked because they fed the homeless? Made their children laugh? Or, bought a toy for a needy child at Christmas time?
Shannon L. Alder
Stop entertaining two faced people. You know the ones who have split personalities and untrustworthy habits. Nine times out of ten if they telling you stuff about another person, they're going to tell your business to other people. If they say, "You know I heard........." More than likely it's in their character to share false information. Beware of your box, circle, square! Whatever you want to call it.
Amaka Imani Nkosazana
When you choose to forgive the same people over and over again you do so because you don't want to believe your time loving them was wasted. Bad relationships over time can become investments, that are hard to let go of. The key to freedom is to realize that love is never wasted. The only thing wasted in life is the time you spend focusing on an unhappy situation that will never change to fit your needs, and not realizing the true investment of time and love are the lessons God wanted you to learn.
Shannon L. Alder
People mean well; they just aren't here enough to get what we are dealing with or what home means to my mother. Everyone thinks they know what should be done, and their suggestions make me suspect they must consider me an idiot who doesn't comprehend the situation.
George Hodgman
He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it
Sierra D. Waters
Just continue to "walk in the light" you have been given, and leave the future in God's hands. If He is calling you to do a job, He will make it possible for you to care for your family and overcome any other barriers to that responsibility.
James C. Dobson
I used to play a game where I imagined that someone had abandoned me in a strange place & I had to find my way back home-I thought I could do it blind, the same way a lost dog might trek a thousand miles to return to its owner, relying on some mysterious instinct that drew the heart back to where it belonged.
Laura McHugh
My mother had been in the Soviet whirlpool for eleven years by this point. Enough time, I imagine, to unlearn the bourgeois habits of her native Brooklyn, to accustom herself to the farting and shouting of her neighbours, to doing her washing by hand in the collective tub, to keeping her dry food locked up in her wardrobe
Sana Krasikov
There’s a wound most troubled boys share, which, at its core, comes from the feeling that they don’t have their father’s unconditional love.
Clayton Lessor MA
Modern life seems set up so that we can avoid loneliness at all costs, but maybe it's worthwhile to face it occasionally. The further we push aloneness away, the less are we able to cope with it, and the more terrifying it gets. Some philosophers believe that loneliness is the only true feeling there is. We live orphaned on a tiny rock in the immense vastness of space, with no hint of even the simplest form of life anywhere around us for billions upon billions of miles, alone beyond all imagining. We live locked in our own heads and can never entirely know the experience of another person. Even if we're surrounded by family and friends, we journey into death completely alone.
Michael Finkel
Prison is designed to separate, isolate, and alienate you from everyone and everything. You're not allowed to do so much as touch your spouse, your parents, your children. The system does everything within its power to sever any physical or emotional links you have to anyone in the outside world. They want your children to grow up without ever knowing you.They want your spouse to forget your face and start a new life. They want you to sit alone, grieving, in a concrete box, unable even to say your last farewell at a parent's funeral.
Damien Echols
This, too, is the Biblical description of work. In sin men lose their dominion over the creation which God gave them, and their relationship with this creation becomes toil. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for our of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17-19)Work represents the broken relationship between men and the rest of creation. Men, literally, work to death.The fallenness of work, the broken relationship between men and the rest of creation which work is, involves both the alienation of men from nature and from the rest of creation, including the principalities and powers. In work men lose their dominion over the principalities and are in bondage to the principalities. Instead of men ruling the great institutions – corporations, unions, and so on – men are ruled by the great institutions.
William Stringfellow
O Father, console them and please spare our country from that terrible disaster, not because we are any better but only out of grace. And if it has to be different, then teach me to pray: "Your will be done." O please protect him whom my soul lives! -From the journal of Diet Eman
Diet Eman
Knowledge isn’t life changing. The application of knowledge is.
Todd Stocker
Familiarity is the dagger thrust into the heart of fear.
Todd Stocker
Now, I don't smile because I have a perfect life or even because I'm having a perfect day - I smile because that's how I choose to deal with whatever life throws my way.
Lindsey Rietzsch
I looked at an angel today, but the angel could not see me. The angel was more amazing than beautiful, like the best forgotten dream.
Delano Johnson
The best thing to do when someone is trying to argue with you is to repeatedly state "Stay Away" and video record the entire event. You may need that video for the police afterwords when the aggressor starts fabricating fantasies about the event.
Steven Magee
The best of fiction, as we know, of course, doesn't tell the truth; it tales the truth.
Criss Jami
Kate grasped her small handbag and pulled a small blue vial and threw it into the grinding mass. It shattered harmlessly, causing two creatures to pause with a look of confusion."What is that potion?" Simon asked.Kate stared as the two undead things began to shuffle forward again. She glanced into her purse. "Damn it! That was my perfume.
Clay Griffith
We were friends before.” Sort of. We never tried to kill each other.
Amanda Bouchet
As if the president gives a crap about demons and what they go through just because her father’s got horns?” Morganith returned. “She never opens her coward mouth about the quiet oppression the demons -- your people -- face every single day --!” “Our people,” Hari calmly corrected.t“No,” said Morganith at once. “Halflings have never been anyone’s people.
Ash Gray
Go find your own hiding spot!” I hissed. “The seat is not wide enough to hold me and that whale you call a nightgown.” Also, we were better off if whoever was coming caught one of us – and by one of us, I meant Rose.
Erica Sehyun Song
The pain in my heart was worse than anything I ever imagined. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. All I could feel was the void of her absence growing stronger inside me, and the panic of not ever seeing her eyes open again struck me like an iron whip.
Nely Cab
...while epic fantasy is based on the fairy tale of the just war, that’s not one you’ll find in Grimm or Disney, and most will never recognize the shape of it. I think the fantasy genre pitches its tent in the medieval campground for the very reason that we even bother to write stories about things that never happened in the first place: because it says something subtle and true about our own world, something it is difficult to say straight out, with a straight face. Something you need tools to say, you need cheat codes for the human brain--a candy princess or a sugar-coated unicorn to wash down the sour taste of how bad things can really get.See, I think our culture has a slash running through the middle of it, too. Past/Future, Conservative/Liberal, Online/Offline. Virgin/Whore. And yes: Classical/Medieval. I think we’re torn between the Classical Narrative of Self and the Medieval Narrative of Self, between the choice of Achilles and Keep Calm and Carry On.The Classical internal monologue goes like this: do anything, anything, only don’t be forgotten. Yes, this one sacrificed his daughter on a slab at Aulis, that one married his mother and tore out his eyes, and oh that guy ate his kids in a pie. But you remember their names, don’t you? So it’s all good in the end. Give a Greek soul a choice between a short life full of glory and a name echoing down the halls of time and a long, gentle life full of children and a quiet sort of virtue, and he’ll always go down in flames. That’s what the Iliad is all about, and the Odyssey too. When you get to Hades, you gotta have a story to tell, because the rest of eternity is just forgetting and hoping some mortal shows up on a quest and lets you drink blood from a bowl so you can remember who you were for one hour.And every bit of cultural narrative in America says that we are all Odysseus, we are all Agamemnon, all Atreus, all Achilles. That we as a nation made that choice and chose glory and personal valor, and woe betide any inconvenient “other people” who get in our way. We tell the tales around the campfire of men who came from nothing to run dotcom empires, of a million dollars made overnight, of an actress marrying a prince from Monaco, of athletes and stars and artists and cowboys and gangsters and bootleggers and talk show hosts who hitched up their bootstraps and bent the world to their will. Whose names you all know. And we say: that can be each and every one of us and if it isn’t, it’s your fault. You didn’t have the excellence for it. You didn’t work hard enough. The story wasn’t about you, and the only good stories are the kind that have big, unignorable, undeniable heroes.
Catherynne M. Valente
Iron. Ice.A Love Doomed From the Start
Julie Kagawa
The heart beneath the breastbone pumping. The blood on its appointed rounds. Life in small places, narrow crannies. In the leaves, the toad's pulse. The delicate cellular warfare in a waterdrop. A dextrocardiac, said the smiling doctor. Your heart's in the right place. Weathershrunk and loveless. The skin drawn and split like an overripe fruit.
Cormac McCarthy
Magic?" What did magic have to do with breaking into someone's store and stealing their stuff?"Don't you get it?" Peter said. "You're free now. You don't have to live by their rules anymore." Peter pointed into the inky blackness of the basement. "The darkness is calling. A little danger, a little risk. Feel your heart race, listen to it. That's the sound of being alive. It's your time, Nick. Your one chance to have fun before it's all stolen by them, the adults, with their cruelty and endless rules, their can't-do-this, and can't-do-that's, their have-tos, and better-dos, their little boxes and cages all designed to break your spirit, to kill your magic.
Brom
How can you follow your heart, unless you know why you have allowed it to be empty for so long and didn't have the courage to fix it?
Shannon L. Alder
I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it?
Jerry Spinelli