Quotes by American Authors - Page 15

Why is it that we who have enjoyed the human free­doms which our forefathers fought so hard to win and to bequeath to us, do not, with the example of Russia before us, realize the horrors of life without freedom? Why is it that we cannot understand that there is no such thing as embracing Communism as an experiment? It is a one-way street, ending in a cul de sac of secret police terror, firing squads for the intellectuals and leaders and concentration camps and slave labor for the masses. There is no turning back; there is no escape.
Freda Utley
What had been a region of model farming became almost a desert, for more than half the population was exiled or sent to concentration camps. The young people left the villages, the boys to go to the factories if they could get jobs, or to become vagabonds if they couldn’t.***An echo of the tragic fate of Russia’s German Protestant population reached the world when the Mennonites flocked to Moscow and sought permission to leave the country. Some of these Germans had tried to obey the government and had formed collective farms, only to have them liquidated as Kulak collectives. Being first-class farmers, they had committed the crime of making even a Kolkhoz productive and prosperous.Others had quite simply been expropriated from their individual holdings. All were in despair. Few were allowed to leave Russia. They were sent to Siberia to die, or herded into slave labor concentration camps. The crime of being good farmers was unforgivable, and they must suffer for this sin.***Cheat or be cheated, bully or be bullied, was the law of life. Only the German minority with their strong religious and moral sense—the individual morality of the Protestant as opposed to the mass subservience demanded by the Greek Orthodox Church and the Soviet Government—retained their culture and even some courage under Stalin’s Terror.
Freda Utley
Now we will live!” This is what the hungry little boy liked to say, as he toddled along the quiet roadside, or through the empty fields. But the food that he saw was only in his imagination. The wheat had all been taken away, in a heartless campaign of requisitions that began Europe’s era of mass killing. It was 1933, and Joseph Stalin was deliberately starving Soviet Ukraine. The little boy died, as did more than three million other people. “I will meet her,” said a young Soviet man of his wife, “under the ground.” He was right; he was shot after she was, and they were buried among the seven hundred thousand victims of Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937 and 1938. “They asked for my wedding ring, which I….” The Polish officer broke off his diary just before he was executed by the Soviet secret police in 1940. He was one of about two hundred thousand Polish citizens shot by the Soviets or the Germans at the beginning of the Second World War, while Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly occupied his country. Late in 1941, an eleven-year-old Russian girl in Leningrad finished her own humble diary: “Only Tania is left.” Adolf Hitler had betrayed Stalin, her city was under siege by the Germans, and her family were among the four million Soviet citizens the Germans starved to death. The following summer, a twelve-year-old Jewish girl in Belarus wrote a last letter to her father: “I am saying good-bye to you before I die. I am so afraid of this death because they throw small children into the mass graves alive.” She was among the more than five million Jews gassed or shot by the Germans.
Timothy Snyder
American Progressives have declared war on the sanctity and autonomy of the individual.
A.E. Samaan
Professor Rex Curry ... has been researching the link between Hitler's National Socialism and Edward Bellamy's 'socialistic' form of 'nationalism.
A.E. Samaan
…The story of the Pledge of Allegiance and its National Socialist roots is a fascinating one. Dr. Rex Curry, a passionate libertarian, has made the issue his white whale.
Jonah Goldberg
Having lived in a mythical country, a place neither here nor there, these intellectuals from Vilna and Gomel helped create another and called it the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Such a name! It was hardly a union. The Soviets - workers’ councils - ruled it for about six weeks; socialism impoverished everybody, and only machine guns kept the republics from turning into nations. But to Szarza and the rest it didn’t matter. He’d put his life on the line, preferring simply to die at the wrong end of a gun rather than the wrong end of a club, and for twelve years - until 1929, when Stalin finally took over - he lived in a kind of dream world, a mythical country where idealistic, intellectual Jews actually ran things, quite literally a country of the mind. Theories failed, peasants died, the land itself dried up in despair. Still they worked twenty hours a day and swore they had the answer.
Alan Furst
You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor.
Christopher Hitchens
We ate away, reminiscing about our victories over the enemies from different streets and villages and competing with each other in casting curses. A few golden butterflies and dragonflies were fluttering around us. The afternoon air was warm and clean, and the town below us seemed like a green harbor full of white sails.
Ha Jin
A heart anchored in money will only drift away.
Anthony Liccione
There was something of Francis in the boy, something pure and genuine and flawed. That type didn't think twice before running headlong into a burning house or a young girl's arms.
Johanna Moran
People hide the truth to protect those they love!
Craig Mercier
I'll show Dunky he's not the only one in the family who can rush foolishly into danger!
Christopher Healy
Accidents happen. I will, um . . . I will pay to have your house rebuilt." "And my barn?" a woman called out. Liam sighed. "Yes, and your barn, too." "And my golden carousel?" shouted another man. "Will you pay for that?" Liam raised an eyebrow. "The giant smashed your golden carousel?" "No," said the man. "I'd just like to have a golden carousel.
Christopher Healy
Ha! Good luck, lady!" Gustav laughed and tapped his thick index finger against his temple. "No one knows what goes on inside this head. Not even me.
Christopher Healy
For a hero is someone who is selfless. Think about it, friends. Superman, Luke Skywalker, and Captain America. They are helping others. They aren’t only thinking for themselves. They are reaching out beyond themselves.
Mark Andrew Poe
He was a man. Just a man. Yet, you always knew he'd succeed. He made you be what he wanted you to be.
Brandon Sanderson
The life of hero is the tale of a person overcoming personal hardship and obstacles while striving to achieve an exultant victory that voices repressed citizens’ ecstatic thoughts and dreams.
Kilroy J. Oldster
From there, a more difficult period began. Even the villains, the world's worst people, the one percent, what have you, imagine themselves to be the heroes of their own stories, and I saw myself this way. I, too, could be a hero or protagonist, and not some mere bystander in the greater drama of someone else's life. It was awkward to see a murderer as a hero, so I had to constantly remind myself of how Auggie's stepfather had been selfish and evil.
Alex Kudera
He had you in his room?" A dark cloud crosses Jeb’s face. “Do you swear he didn’t try anything?”“Scout’s honor.”He squeezes my waist, tickling me. “Too bad you were never a Scout.”I squirm and smile. “Nothing happened.”That’s a lie. Morpheus got to me in a big way, showing me a side of myself I can hardly believe exists—one I’m not sure Jeb will be able to accept.
A.G. Howard
Now, it’s time for me to lock up and go. Listen to me. Lock up an empty building that’s gonna be torn down. Makes no sense. Like an old man tellin’ a lie to his son from his death bed. What’s the point? Who besides yourself are you fooling?
Dan Groat
Just as the truth can be buried under a rubble of lies,a lie can be buried under a rubble of truth.
Khang Kijarro Nguyen
I look for ambiguity because life is ambiguous!
Marko Stout
God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked, for there will be a time for every activity, a time to judge every deed.~Ecclesiastes 3:17
Jessica Fortunato
That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.
John Steinbeck
Every insecure soul has a government of their own and a paid judge in their court room.
Shannon L. Alder
Do you have any idea what the typical response is whenever I do give someone a glimpse of my life?"Gideon paused, as if he waited for her to answer. And Monroe hesitated. Yes. She did know. She knew because it was the same response she would get it she chose to let down her own guard. Hell, it was practically the same response Miles had given the night she had told him the unadulterated truth of her past. She shook her head again. "Standard response," he said. "I swear to God. First thing out of their mouth's is: 'Wow. It's shocking you're so normal.' What the fuck? Do I have to be damaged for my past to make sense? And what the hell is normal anyway? And does white bread America have dibs on it?"Gideon stopped talking, crossed his arms, and the look on his face said he regretted saying as much as he had.
Taylor Stevens
I'm too wacky for most weirdos. Who am I to judge?
Tori Amos
I was now privy to how a calm, average , peace-loving individual can suddenly get infected with a special kind of crazy. Higher reasoning is replaced with killer animal instincts.
Dan Skinner
Once everyone thought you were crazy, they ignored you even when you told the truth.
Thomm Quackenbush
I can be a stupid girl inside of a crazy woman at times over you. If I weren’t, you should be worried! We all do stupid shit. I might as well be a fool for someone worth it.
Crystal Woods
This is what we do. We do crazy shit because we're broken. That's who we are. That's what we do.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to “being crazy” and having had abusive parents, clients will choose “crazy” most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her the
Lisa Ferentz
As a radiation researcher, I am at one with being perceived as crazy!
Steven Magee
I do not mean to mock or ridicule your life's work, for in one way at least it mimics my own: We have dedicated our lives to the pursuit of phantoms. The difference is the nature of those phantoms. Mine exist between other men's ears; yours live solely between your own.
Rick Yancey
... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]
Anne Lamott
You could have all the crazy thoughts you wanted, as long as you smiled and kept them to yourself.
Mara Purnhagen
Consider, O Lord, how You sit atop the sky;like a man in a glass bottom boat.Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.
Cecilia Llompart
Have an appreciating eye to enjoy the beauty of sky.
Debasish Mridha
Under a sky that hasn't been blue for weeks.
Hillary Frank
I've alway found that the most beautiful people, truly beautiful inside and out, are the ones who are quietly unaware of their effect.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
A teenage boy with a Mohawk sat across from me, sneering. I’d seen that look before. Why was it a problem to knit in public?“My grandma knits.”I ignored him.“So what are you making, Grandma?” Mohawk’s voice was ugly.I arched my eyebrow. “A cashmere cock ring. Your grandma ever knit one of those?”The kid’s eyes grew wide, and he suddenly became very interested in a four-year-old issue of Teen Vogue.
Leslie Langtry
One of the stall doors swings open and a fortyish-year-old woman walks out tucking her shirt into her jeans. Her heavy lined eyes land on Seth. "This is the women's restroom." She points a finger to the door. "Can't you read?""Can't you see that everyone in this club is about twenty years younger than you?" Seth retorts, turning to the mirror. With his pinkie, he messes with bangs. "Now if you'll excuse us, we're going to have some fun.
Jessica Sorensen
Whenever the sun is shining, I feel obligated to play outside!
Charles M. Schulz
Aren't you going a little overboard?" I asked, picturing a day ahead of me trying to find these items in a town I didn't know."Nonsense, darling. What's the point of a party if you don't go overboard."I sat on the sofa watching her, admiring her. Not only was she beautiful, but she had a wonderful way of shaking off life's little problems, like water off a duck's back. Nothing seemed to upset her.
Rhys Bowen
Had an amazing weekend hanging with my pals.
Victoria Justice
Go and play. Run around. Build something. Break something. Climb a tree. Get dirty. Get in some trouble. Have some fun.
Brom
My idea of Heaven has nothing to do with fluffy clouds or angels. In my Heaven there's butter pecan ice cream and swimming pools and baseball games. The Brooklyn Dodgers always win, and I have the best seat in the house, right behind the Dodger's dugout. That's the only advantage that I can see about being dead: You get the best seat in the house.
Jennifer L. Holm
Be grateful. These feelings, no matter how painful, are part ofliving. Today, we are alive—not anesthetized, not sedated, not passedout. Take control of your feelings and through action you can change.Today, as every day of sober living, we have a choice.
Ann D. Clark
Some things you jes' know Doll, and that's one I'd bet the farm on.
Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
Mom and dad probably told you I've been arrested. I'm innocent. I want you to know that.
Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
I'd never opened up the gas station if it had been someone else, but I know Tucker's fond of you. It's a shame you don't keep in touch with the old man.
Dianne Harman Cornered Coyote
No, you cannot stop the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building nests in your hair.
D.B. Patterson
Wisdom holds a candle to experience, but you've got to take the candle and walk alone.
Lauren Kate
I believe the meaning of life is the relationships we have with each other." 
Ken Poirot
Creating something is only half the battle. The other half is finding people who care about it.
Ramsey Isler
The ability to represent failure as success would become an Agency tradition.
Tim Weiner
Credibility comes from results. Everything else is just marketing.
Richie Norton
I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as his only AVAILABLE one, thus proving that he is himself AVAILABLE for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.
Henry David Thoreau
Thinking for yourself and making your own decisions can be frightening. Letting go of other people’s expectations can leave you feeling empty for a time. And yet seeing yourself as an independent adult who can stand up for your own choices frees you to accept yourself as you are.
Ellen Bass