Quotes by American Authors - Page 245

The road simply ended. No cul-de-sac. No sign like the ones they had seen before: "Private Property. No Trespassing." Or "No Motorized Vehicles Beyond This Point." Just road...then trees.
Robert Liparulo
The few trees still upright were stripped of their branches, lonely flagpoles without a nation to claim them.
Mike Mullin
She was sitting in a garden more beautiful than even her rampaging imagination could ever have conjured up, and she was being serenaded by trees.
Lynn Kurland
The very idea of "managing" a forest in the first place is oxymoronic, because a forest is an ecosystem that is by definition self-managing.
Bernd Heinrich
Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees...to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929
John Vaillant
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.
Max Ehrmann
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, doesn't it just lie there and rot?
Chuck Palahniuk
To be poor and be without trees, is to be the most starved human being in the world. To be poor and have trees, is to be completely rich in ways that money can never buy.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Elizabeth walked past just as Mrs. Ferguson, pulling down her wide-brimmed hat, announced that teenagers today were the most inconsiderate creatures she had ever seen. 'I'm afraid I have to agree with you,' Elizabeth had heard her twin say mournfully, clearly distinguishing herself from the inconsiderate teenagers milling all around them.
Francine Pascal
Storming was one of her main modes of transportation." In reference to teenager Heather in "Carry The One
Carol Anshaw
So how did you get this job, anyway?' I asked.'My science teacher.''Why'd he pick you?''For my brains and good looks, obviously.''Yeah, right. My social studies teacher picked me, but I can't really figure out why."'For your brains and good looks, obviously.''Um, thanks.' Had Aaron just complimented me? Wow.
Polly Shulman
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
John Green
Shut off the internal bashing.
Melody Carlson
I've been asking around to find out what girls are into," Eugene tells me, really pleased with himself. "So I'm gonna get a spray tan and make red-velvet cupcakes.
Flynn Meaney
When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
John Green
Let me give you some advice here: People who want to have the sex talk with you will act the same way as people who want to murder you. First they get you in their car, so they're in control and you can't escape. Then they drive you someplace in the middle of nowhere.
Flynn Meaney
By his stripes you are healed.
Melody Carlson
It was a major and deeply embarrassing teenage revelation. It must be how straight teenage boys feel when they realize those boobs they like have heads attached to them.
Tina Fey
In that second, I think about running through that door and going with him. But I know that it’s not the road I’m meant for.Because we’re both still incapable of love. We’re both not ready yet.And I know that I’ll miss him. And some nights, I’ll cry in my sleep.But for now, I’m okay. And that’s all that matters.The void in my heart has finally been filled.And as the train moves farther and farther from me on the platform, I can only smile.
L. Jayne
It takes a good habit to replace a bad habit.
Melody Carlson
A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment.
Jessica Mitford
My darling goddaughter, Olivia, was the little girl of my friends, Max and Jeff. She was turning four, and it was time to transition her from her shortened toddler bed to a full-size big girl bed. It would be the bed where she'd have her childhood dreams and her teenage angst. I wanted it strong enough to tolerate her little girl bouncing and her teenage flouncing.It had to be perfect.
Amber Kell
If you work around at-risk teen students, actually tell them you love them and have faith in their success. No one tells them that. No one.
Ace Antonio Hall
If God wanted teenagers to be abstinent, puberty would begin at twenty.
Jacob M. Appel
Life is too short, you know? You have to make the best of it. Do things most teenagers wouldn’t do.
Tessa Emily Hall
Ricky was a young boy, he had a heart of stone./Tequila in his heartbeat, his veins burned gasoline./18 and life you got it.
Skid Row
Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
Arthur Miller
Women dress for women, if we dressed for me, we'd all be running around naked.
Jillian Dodd
The hard way is my favorite way to learn.
Sarah McCarry
Damn Disney & all their happily-after-ever, unrealistic bullshit stories
Jillian Dodd
Everyone wants to feel special - attain a special status among their pears- but not too special. Most kids want to be special the same way their friends are
Chuck Palahniuk
Until kids find something worth dying for, they don't have anything worth living for.
Tim Kimmel
Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls
Amy Tan
One of my pet peeves was when an adult imagined they had to encapsulate Life for you, hand you Life in a jar, in an eyedropper, in a penguin paperweight full of snow-A Collector's Dream.
Marisha Pessl
Surely that was why faith had been invented: to raise teenagers without dying. Although of course it was also why death was invented: to escape teenagers altogether.
Lorrie Moore
Her youngest daughter shrugged. “Ain’t got no money, do we?” “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you pillaging like the rest of your kin?” “It was the Northlands, Da. Ain’t nothin’ to pillage but the crows in the trees.” “And snow,” their eldest added. “Lots and lots of snow.” Bram motioned to his study. “You know where I keep the gold coin.” As if on fire, their offspring made a desperate run for their father’s study, climbing over the table and fighting each other through the door. It wasn’t pretty.
G.A. Aiken
You are a pearl of great price to me, but there are times when you are an almighty trial to those who love you.
Charles Portis
I see that even as the world plunges into darkness and peril, you two stand around discussing your love lives. Teenagers.
Cassandra Clare
They're really into it, laughing and teasing each other, and I am looking at Pam and thinking once again how she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and that if we were back in the olden times she might have been made into a goddess because she is so beautiful. Sometimes I cannot stop my mind. It's scary.
James Howe
When teenagers aren’t turning like weathervanes in a high wind, they’re as stiff as Puritans.
Stephen King
They rarely look at Baba -- the teenagers -- and then only with cold indifference, or even subtle disdain, as if my father should have known better than to allow old age and decay to happen to him.
Khaled Hosseini
I was hoping we could just listen to Jimmy Eat World and forget we ever grew up.
Crystal Woods
Insecurity, thy name is teenager.
Jim Butcher
All of their faces are cluttered with the shrapnel of rebellion, as if a grenade of alienation has exploded in their midst, piercing every possible soft point of flesh-from earlobes and nostrils to eyebrows, lips, and tongues-with metal studs and rings.
Jonathan Tropper
I thought you were just typical teenagers.”No one has ever called me typical. I can’t say I like it.
Sarah Nicolas
This was 1991, remember. We didn't have the Internet. So, as teenagers, we lived on the phone. There was no webcamming, no social networking. We dreamt simply of having our own personal phone lines one day, along with uninterrupted hours to talk, and we rarely got that. No matter who we were talking to, no matter how private the conversation, parents picked up the phone accidentally, siblings demanded their time. The introduction of call waiting made all of this even worse, as it allowed aunts and uncles and people you didn't even know to butt in. This is part of why we talked so late in the night, Lindy and I, all of us teens. This is why we looked so pale in our grunge clothes. These night hours were the only times we felt we could tell the truth without danger, the only times we could live separately from our parents while still inside of their homes. There were no cell phones. No private text messages. It was simple one on one conversation and, if it was any good at all, you had to whisper.
M.O. Walsh
How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, as if simultaneously we're immortal and going to die tomorrow. And that's why we look back on that time so fondly from the dimmer years to come. Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic.
Charles Frazier
I wish they'd conduct a national poll to find out who feels out of place and who doesn't. Just to get the numbers, you know? To get a feel for how many of us there are. Sometimes at work I get the feeling that it's got to be right up against 100%. I’ll head out to the register to help out during the lunch rush and the new cashier will look so confused and lost, and then I’ll look at the customers she’s supposed to be helping, and they’ll look lost, too, and then when I sneak a glance toward the tables there’ll be all these people staring at their food or at each other with blank looks in their eyes. And I’ll think: Is this just me? Is everybody else actually fine, and I’m just trying to imagine that they’re like me? But I don’t think so. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty sure that some ridiculous percentage of the population is walking around feeling like aliens.tI think teenagers feel that all the time...
John Darnielle
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. Christmas and the others can end up making you sad, because you know you should be happy. But on Halloween you get to become anything that you want to be
Ava Dellaira
If the only one who can kill an angel can’t do it, then who can?’ It’s a good question, one that takes me a minute to come up with an answer. ‘Obadiah West can. Him and his freedom fighters. I’m just a teenager.’‘History is filled with teenagers who lead the fight. Joan of Arc. Okita Soji, the samurai. Alexander the Great. They were all teenagers when they began leading their armies. I think we’re back to those times again, kid.
Susan Ee
Most of the time, all the separates a class president and a gang leader is numbers: a zip code, a paycheck, or a drug dealer’s phone number.
Thomm Quackenbush
Whenever my colleagues and I encounter a boy who acts "normal"—not explosively violent, not oppositional to every word, not obsessed with killing and dying, not focused on sexual objectification—we are overjoyed with his potential. Here is one who has a stronger foundation on which to build, one who will not knock down his every success like a child with a brick castle to see if the adults will keep helping him rebuild.
Thomm Quackenbush
With each tweet, post, share and comment, we are building and adding to our digital iceberg.
Tiffany Sunday
Another teen friendship, another tiny mysterious universe.
Austin Grossman
Don’t worry, my friend. I won’t let you die.” I was seventeen and stupid and I believed him.
David Benioff
It was bad, but what in high school is not? At the time we're stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems like the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It's not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.
Stephen King
A human teenager. One of God’s most misbegotten creatures – big like grown-ups and yet dumb like children.
Eliza Crewe
A teenager boy is a monstrous cyborg, an unfeeling, beastly machine, not fully human, and not housebroken. Rumbustious teenage boys are an infernal organism disdainful of everything, yet intent of contributing to human evolution.
Kilroy J. Oldster
I stop at the tune store, where I'm greeted by Javier and Jules. Half the store is Javier's, half is Jules's—they have entirely different musical tastes, so you have to know going in whether the tune you're looking for is more like Javier or Jules. They have been together for more than twenty years, and today as they offer me cider and argue the blues, I want to ask them how they've done it. To be together with someone for twenty years seems like an eternity to me. I can't seem to manage twenty days. Twenty weeks would be a stretch. How can they stand there behind the counter, spinning songs for each other day in and day out? How can they find things to say—how can they avoid saying things they'll always regret? How do you stay together? I want to ask them, the same way I want to ask my happy parents, the same way I want to go up to old people and ask them 'what is it like to live so long'?
David Levithan
(...) I could "talk fast" -- that's to say, without hesitating, stammering -- most of the time -- but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too!' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all.
Joyce Carol Oates