Quotes by American Authors - Page 15

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
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
We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.
Ronald Reagan
In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls.
David Foster Wallace
It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.
Washington Irving
Something, most certainly, happens to a diver’s emotions underwater. It is not merely a side effect of the pleasing, vaguely erotic sensation of water pressure on the body. Nor is it alone the peculiar sense of weightlessness, which permits a diver to hang motionless in open water, observing sea life large as whales around him; not the ability of a diver, descending in that condition, to slowly tumble and rotate in all three spatial planes. It is not the exhilaration from disorientation that comes when one’s point of view starts to lose its “lefts” and “down” and gains instead something else, a unique perception that grows out of the ease of movement in three dimensions. It is not from the diminishment of gravity to a force little more emphatic than a suggestion. It is not solely exposure to an unfamiliar intensity of life. It is not a state of rapture with the bottomless blue world beneath one’s feet…it is some complicated mix of these emotions, together with the constant proximity of real terror.
Barry López
About Hollywood.I feel like it’s a big ocean, full of bottom feeders, midlevel fish, the occasional shark, and some wonderful savvy whales, the elders, and the ones who guide you on your way. If you’re lucky enough, you get to be a dolphin and have your waves broken by the passage of these elders before you, but at the same time, you get an occasional shark bite in the tail and maybe one of the bottom feeders comes up and takes a little nibble. But I see myself as cresting a series of waves, dipping down, sometimes, lower than I’d like, but mainly kind of happily staying above. (smiles and takes a long drag of her cigarette) And, of course, I try to avoid the fishnets.
Anjelica Huston
Things are never as they seem. A person. A Mark. A statement. They are always deeper than we perceive, like walking in the ocean and suddenly dipping under the surface because the bottom has disappeared beneath your feet. The water appears shallow until you are suddenly flailing around beneath the surface, desperately searching for stable ground once again.
Kelseyleigh Reber
What she really loved was to hang over the edge and watch the bow of the ship slice through the waves. She loved it especially when the waves were high and the ship rose and fell, or when it was snowing and the flakes stung her face.
Kristin Cashore
There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater,you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.
Dave Barry
For as long as I've known him, Sam has been trying to out-run his demons. But he can't see the truth. His problems - they never sleep, never take a break. They'll wear him down before he can wear them out.
Lisa Magnum
Someone should have warned me about love's dark underbelly, about the rejection and despair.
Victoria Scott
Now you’re going to get it,” I said, guessing Al was coming when the ones in the back scattered. “You should have been nice.”With a weird cry, the closest surface demon fell back, but it was too late. A flash of red light exploded overhead, smashing the buildings away as if I were at the center of an atomic explosion. The surface demons scattered like brown leaves, the remnants of their clothes and auras fluttering. It was Al, and he burst into existence in a grand mood, an old-fashioned lantern in his hand and a walking cane at his side.“Rachel Mariana Morgan!” he shouted enthusiastically, raising the lantern high, and I painfully rose from my crouch, breaking my bubble with a small thought. “I’ve come to save you, love!
Kim Harrison
I stood with my mom in the cemetery. She felt terrible pain. My grandmother is with God. My mom has to continue living. It’s not so easy, moving forward.
Tucker Elliot
Korea is often called the “Land of the Morning Calm.” It’s a country where you notice the filth and the smog on your first trip and you can’t imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea to visit. Then you meet the people and you walk among their culture and you get a sense there is something deeper beneath the surface, and before you know it, the smog doesn’t matter and the filth is gone—and in its place there is incredible beauty. The sun rises first over Japan, and as Korea is waiting for the earth to spin, for streaks of light to brighten its eastern sky, in that quiet moment there is a calmness that makes Korea the most beautiful country in the world.
Tucker Elliot
This is who I was, before I was dead. When I cared, when I was relentless.
Tucker Elliot
I’m in my classroom and I’m looking at this girl, but all I can see is my dad on the ground, in front of The Wall, telling the truth, finally—his knees drawn and his chest heaving—and when people pass by they look the other way, except for this one lady who stops to give my dad a hug. She gets down on her knees to reach him, and now she’s crying with a stranger, and without asking I know it’s because she’s lost something, too, and I wonder if in comforting my dad she thinks she can find it again. Probably not. It doesn’t work that way.
Tucker Elliot
Every war and conflict that the United States enters has its own ROE [rules of engagement]. Contrary to what most people think, the U.S. military does not have a complete license to kill, even in wartime. We are not a barbaric state, and we do not enter any war with the intention of unilaterally killing anything in our path. We go out of our way to spare civilian lives, to keep those who are not in the war out of it--sometimes even at the expense of risking our own soldiers' safety. We do this by creating strict rules to which our soldies adhere. These rules govern when they can fire, when they cannot; what type of force they can use, what type they cannot; what they can do in particular situations, and what they cannot. The reason for this is that battles can become very confusing very quickly, and a common soldier needs simple rules to guide him, to know when he is or is not allowed to kill--and who is and is not the enemy.
Michael DeLong