Quotes by American Authors - Page 158

There is no indication that God explained to Joseph what He was doing through those many years of heartache or how the pieces would eventually fit together. He had no ways of knowing that he would eventually enjoy a triumphal reunion with his family. He was expected, as you and I are, to live out his life one day at a time in something less than complete understanding. What pleased God was Joseph’s faithfulness when nothing made sense.
James C. Dobson
My grandfather had been the ugliest, darkest, foulest, most depraved figure of my childhood, more beast than human, and I had grown up to be him, locked in the basement with my secrets as the rest of the family reveled in the petty and ordinary upstairs. Down there, I saw my black, ancient, ineluctable core exposed, like a crab forced out of its shell--dirty, vulnerable, and obscene. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone.
Marilyn Manson
In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements.
Marvin Harris
Tamlin’s arm tightened around me, and he kissed the top of my head. I pulled back, looking up at him.The gold in his eyes, bright with the rising sun, flickered. “What?”“My father once told me that I should let my sisters imagine a better life—a better world. And I told him that there was no such thing.” I ran my thumb over his mouth, marveling, and shook my head. “I never understood—because I couldn’t … couldn’t believe that it was even possible.” I swallowed, lowering my hand. “Until now.”His throat bobbed. His kiss that time was deep and thorough, unhurried and intent.I let the dawn creep inside me, let it grow with each movement of his lips and brush of his tongue against mine. Tears pricked beneath my closed eyes.It was the happiest moment of my life.
Sarah J Maas
Goddamn it, Joanna!' Claire called. After twelve years her voice was sharper than Jo remembered. 'I know you're standing on the stairs,' she said. 'I can see you. Get down here and help me!
Tiffany Baker
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
Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.
Clayton Lessor MA
What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well.
Glenn Close
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
Healthy boys grow into healthy men.
Clayton Lessor MA
A visit to the family farm in spring means witnessing growth and challenge and beauty and stillness all rolled into one.
Heidi Barr
Hurt can make you blind to the truth
Abby Clements
There are a world of answers, outside the loop.
Anthony Liccione
William loathed his family,' Mercer said. 'With cause.
Garth Risk Hallberg
Our herd may roam, but we all know where is home.
Maria V. Snyder
In real life I fell easily under the spell of all traveling artists. En route to New Orleans, entertainments of many kinds would stop over in those days for a single performance in Jackson's Century Theatre. Then, as now, my imagination was magnetized toward transient artists - toward the transience as much as the artists. I must have seen "Acrobats in a Park" at the time I wrote the story as exotic, free of any experience as I knew it. At the center of the little story is the Zorro's act: the feat of erecting a structure of their bodies that holds together, interlocked, and stands like a wall. Writing about the family act, I was writing about the family itself, its strength as a unit, testing its frailty under stress. I treated it in an artificial and oddly formal way; the stronghold of the family is put on view as a structure built each night; on the night before the story opens, the Wall has come down when the most vulnerable member slips, and the act is done for. But from various points within it and from outside it, I've been writing about the structure of the family in stories and novels ever since. In spite of my uncompromising approach to it, my fundamental story form might have been trying to announce itself to me.
Eudora Welty
For me, the sea was a great comfort, Pilar. But it made my children restless. It exists now so we can call and wave from opposite shores.
Cristina García
And though our roots belong to the same tree, our branches have grown in different directions.
Suzy Kassem
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
It was hard to know what to make of the brothers' dark infatuation with death. It was strange, wildly anomalous in sun-baked Southern California, where the light is so bright it bleaches the shadows.
Peter Biskind
She expected a lot of me. When I was in fourth grade working on a book report, she made me start the whole thing over when she read it and said it was barely even legible. "What's wrong with it?" I asked her. "It's not good enough yet. You have to try harder," she said, her voice gentle. "You have to try hard at everything you do. That's all I ask." I rolled my eyes and revised it, and over time her approach wore off on me and I became like her too - wanting to do my best, expecting my best.
Daisy Whitney
In Africa, there is a birthrate trap: a higher standard of living will lead to smaller families but smaller families will not lead to a higher standard of living.
Christopher Hitchens
I now know for certain that my mind and emotions, my fix on the real and my family's well-being, depend on just a few grams of salt. But treatment's the easy part. Without honesty, without a true family reckoning, that salt's next to worthless.
David Lovelace
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
If you never learned to hold onto someone, how could it possibly hurt now to let them go?
Shannon L. Alder
How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?
Jandy Nelson
THE UNFORGIVENTell me if you've ever had to deal with these kinds of people:The kind who take and don't give.The kind to whom you give and give,And they keep asking.The kind to whom you give and give and they say you gave nothing.The kind whom have never offered anything,But act like they're the ones providingEVERYTHING.The kind you give and give,But take more than you can give.And when they have already taken everything,They get mad at you when you say you haveNothing more to give.The unforgiving,The misgiving,Wastefully living -And selfishly driven.The rat that never gives back,Yet is so quick to attack -Because they think the wordTAKINGSeriously meansGIVING.
Suzy Kassem
Tell me about your family," I said. And so she did. I listened intently as my mother went through each branch of the tree. Years later, after the funeral, Maria had asked me questions about the family - who was related to whom - and I struggled. I couldn't remember. A big chunk of our history had been buried with my mother. You should never let your past disappear that way.
Mitch Albom
I thought of how proud he was when he took the marks- cutting the skin of his throat in a long slash and then packing it with ashes until keloid scars rose up.He called it his second smile.
Holly Black
Hermes gazed up at the stars. "My dear young cousin, if there's one thing I've learned over the eons, it's that you can't give up on your family, no matter how tempting they make it. It doesn't matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or simply don't appreciate your genius for inventing the Internet-""You invented the Inte
Rick Riordan
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
Erma Bombeck
Lord, I pray that you will let my talent bring JOY and BEAUTY to a world that sometimes is dark and discouraging.
Jennifer Allwood
My pastor mentioned Kierkegaard in a sermon only once, and it would be a long time before I discovered that there was a storied Christian who suffered from, and so in some way sanctioned, depression, rage, sarcasm, and despair - the diseases that took hold in adolescence, for which church offered no cure.
Carlene Bauer
Nothing good in this world comes free! For everything there’s a payment of time or money or soul!
Kellyn Roth
Reckon your weakness as praise of God’s power, endure suffering in joy, risk your life on the veracity of Christ, count your loneliness a means of grace.
William Stringfellow
Biblical spirituality means powerlessness, living without embellishment or pretense, free to be faithful in the gospel, and free from anxiety about effectiveness or similar illusions of success.
William Stringfellow
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
Too commonly sex does not have the dignity of a sacramental event because sex is thought to be the means of the search for self rather than the expression and communication of one who has already found himself, and is free from resort to sex in the frantic pursuit of his own identity.
William Stringfellow
Whether right or wrong, it is my belief that Christian colleges place their emphasis not on that which divides us, but on the substance that binds us together. That commonality is the gospel of Jesus Christ. He commanded us to love one another—to set aside our differences and to care for “the least of these” among us. It is our unity, not our diversity, that deserves our allegiance.
James C. Dobson
Well, there is no sin in being gay. The immorality comes from engaging in forbidden behavior. Therefore, the Christian homosexual is in the same situation as the unmarried heterosexual. He (or she) is expected to control his or her lusts and live a holy life. I know this is a tough position to take, and some will argue with it. But I stand on the authority of Scripture, and I have no license to edit it.
James C. Dobson
What could there be in this document written by a young girl in 1917?
Peter J Tanous
Yes, but perhaps he did have something to do with it.” (In such arguments Stenham often found himself unexpectedly extolling the bourgeois virtues.) “If he was good himself, and worked hard—”“Never!” cried Amar, his eyes blazing. “You’re a Nazarene, a Christian. That’s why you talk that way. If you were a Moslem and said such things, you’d be killed or struck blind here, this minute. Christians have good hearts, but they don’t know anything. They think they can change what has been written. They’re afraid to die because they don’t understand what death is for. And if you’re afraid to die, then you don’t know what life is for. How can you live?
Paul Bowles
Without needing told, without Jacob's lead, Akando dropped to his knees and lunged into the throne room of Christ.
Willowy Whisper
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
They thought we were stupid to do it, (hide Jews) of course; in fact, it was beyond their comprehension that we would risk so much for Jews.
Diet Eman
To me it was real war and my life was at stake, and I believe that all those clandestine spy games we played as children helped when the Occupation came.
Diet Eman
The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not?
E.A. Bucchianeri
Older forms of indentured servanthood and the bond-service of biblical times had often been harsh, but Christian abolitionists concluded that race-based, life-long chattel slavery, established through kidnapping, could not be squared with biblical teaching either in the Old Testament or the New.
Timothy J. Keller
If I entered a tropical beach, would I end up in Nazi Germany with my highly inconvenient black hair?
Karen Marie Moning
I'm less concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going right.Plenty of people can do that.I'm more concerned with how hard you can work and how much time and effort you can dedicate to a project when everything is going wrong.That's a rarity and shows true honor, true character and will lead you that much closer to success.
Loren Weisman
If you always do "just enough" you'll never have more than enough.
Rob Liano
Your journey is completely yours. It is unique. Others may try to steal part of it, tell it in their words or shape it to suit them. Reality is no one can live it or own it but you. Take charge of your journey, it's yours and yours alone!
Kemi Sogunle
What do you resist examining up close?How can you ground yourself so you feel safe enough to try?
Gina Greenlee
What would happen if you gave yourself permission to do somethingyou’ve never done before? There’s only one way to find out.
Gina Greenlee
Practice makes comfort. Expand your experiences regularlyso every stretch won’t feel like your first.
Gina Greenlee
Insecurity is debilitating. It cripples your motivation and breaks your spirit. The condition is NOT insurmountable, but healing will only begin when self loathing ends. Once you learn to love the person you are, there are no limits to the person you can become.
Carlos Wallace
Knowledge isn’t life changing. The application of knowledge is.
Todd Stocker
Conduct yourself in a manner that is worthy of respect and don't worry about what others think.
Bohdi Sanders
You know what is beautiful? A real conversation with a real person.
Jonathan Harnisch
Your Life can easily flow and be filled with joy. Embrace the possibilities!
Leeza Donatella