Quotes by American Authors - Page 301

His hands come down on my face. “There are a lot of things I want to do to you, Ella, but I promise you, killing you isn’t one of them.” His mouth slants over mine, his tongue delving deep, and I want to resist. I do. I try. But his lips are warm when mine are cold, and the taste of him, passion and fire, and yes, demand, burns through me, tempting me, taking me. And for just a moment, I can’t seem to help myself. I want to be possessed by this man. I want to be consumed, so I kiss him back. I kiss him like it’s my last kiss, because maybe it is.
Lisa Renee Jones
They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened Exodus (1960) screenplay
Dalton Trumbo
She had been expecting me and was ready. She gave a long slow soundless headshake, merciful only in being inarticulate. This mercy didn't prevent its hurling at me the largest finest coldest 'Never!' I had yet, in the course of a life that had known denials, had to take full in the face. I took it and was aware that with the hard blow the tears had come into my eyes. So for a while we sat and looked at each other; after which I slowly rose. I was wondering if some day she would accept me; but this was not what I brought out. I said as I smoothed my hat: 'I know what to think then. It's nothing!
Henry James
It is soon to be springThe Christmas toys barely played with I have a glass soldier whose head can turn The epaulettes interchangeable Soon flowers will bloom Lawrence from the garden shed will give us each a cup of seeds I am to wait I said
George Saunders
It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to.
Flora Rheta Schreiber
Like Pascal, Nietzsche, and Simone Weil, Kierkegaard is one of those writers whom it is very difficult to estimate justly. When one reads them for the first time, one is bowled over by their originality . . . and by the sharpness of their insights. . . . But with successive readings one’s doubts grow, one begins to react against their overemphasis on one aspect of the truth at the expense of all the others, and one’s first enthusiasm may all too easily turn to an equally exaggerated aversion. Of all such writers, one might say that one cannot imagine them as children. The more we read them, the more we become aware that something has gone badly wrong with their affective life; . . . it is not only impossible to imagine one of them as a happy husband or wife, it is impossible to imagine their having a single intimate friend to whom they could open their hearts.
W.H. Auden
How do I validate him in the face of such profound personal loss and the outrageous denial by the medical community?
Mary Dimmock
Have you ever been lying in bed, darkness all around, when suddenly there's an odd sound? You know you weren't dreaming; you know you heard it for sure and you know it's not commonplace. You know it's an intrusive sound, a sound that doesn't belong there, and even though it makes no sense, even though it might be an intruder or God knows what, you roll over and forget it...but have you ever wondered what you'd find if you didn't?
Greg F. Gifune
The capacity of sex offenders for denial, rationalization, and minimization of their deviant behavior is confirmed by Salter's (1995) finding that the population she has interviewed seemed rather proud of their ability to manuipulate their victims into remaining attached and loyal to them. Salter notes that frequently child abusers target their victims by calculating their probably vulnerability relative to other children, recognizing that those already being abused by others are better prey than the never-molested children.
Harvey L. Schwartz
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial.
John Bradshaw
To be alone with myself in the space of silence is horrifying, for I know with the utmost certainty that in that space I will hear the very things that I constantly use the clamor to drown out. And so the question becomes, how long can I keep up all the noise?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
For all this talk about us being a nation at war with child abuse, and for all the media hype about witch-hunts and false allegations — and don't ever let anyone use the word witch-hunts about this; there were no witches — the fact remains that in 1994, it is extremely difficult to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse. And the external forces of denial are almost overwhelming. If a case as verified as mine meets with denial, I dread to think about the experience of people who don't have the kind of corroboration that I do. And I really worry that we're getting close to a point where it's going to be impossible to prosecute child molesters, because we don't believe children, and now we don't believe adults. (Cheit "Paper presented at the Mississippi Statewide Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect" Jackson, April 29 1994.)
Ross Cheit
You told me, if something is not used it is meaningless, and took my temperature, which I had thought to save for a more difficult day. In the mirror, every night, the same face, a bit more threadbare, a dress worn too long. The moon was out in the cold, along with the restless, dissatisfied wind that seemed to change the location of the sycamores. I expected reproaches because I had mentioned the word love, but you only accused me of stealing your pencil, and sadness disappeared with sense. You made a ceremony out of holding your head in your hands because, you said, it could not be contained in itself.
Rosmarie Waldrop
People with a style of denial and blaming are definitely on the list of unsafe people to avoid. 10.
Henry Cloud
She had locked something away,something deep inside.A truth that she had once known,but chose to forget.And she couldn't break free.So I decided to search for it.I went deep into the recess of her mindand found that secret place.And I broke in..
Christopher J. Nolan
If there’s one thing I learned in Alanon, it’s that you got to face the music because it just grows louder when you ignore it.
Vicki Covington
Go ahead, look at the message. You know you want to.”“No, it doesn’t matter.”“Then why do you keep staring at it like it’s the last piece of food on earth?
Victoria Michaels
The thing about denial is that it doesn't feel like denial when it's going on.
Georgina Kleege
For nothing is so hard to hear as that which is half known, and evaded. One never denies so hotly as in denying to one's self what one fears is true, and one never resents so bitterly as in resenting that which one cannot say one has the right to resent.
Susan Glaspell
...and he just sat back and stared at the tube, almost interested in what was happening, trying to find the ability to believe in that lie so he could believe the one within.
Hubert Selby Jr.
Maggie scoffed. "Denial will not save you when Cupid's arrow find its mark.""If i see Cupid anywhere in the vicinity, I'm ripping his chubby little arms off." Vanda yanked the door open to Romatech.
Kerrelyn Sparks
Raffe arches his brow at me. ‘You should be with a nice human boy. One who takes your orders and puts up with your demands. Someone who dedicates his life to keeping you safe and well fed. Someone who can make you happy. Someone you can be proud of.’ He waves his hand at the Watchers. ‘There’s nobody like that in this lot.’ I glare at him. ‘I’ll be sure to pass him by you first before I’ – settle for – ‘choose him.’ ‘You do that. I’ll let him know what’s expected of him.’ ‘Assuming he survives your interrogation,’ says Howler. ‘Big assumption,’ says Cyclone. ‘I’d like to be there to watch,’ says Hawk. ‘Should be interesting.
Susan Ee
Everything was perfectly healthy and normal here in Denial Land.
Jim Butcher
That’s pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.
Chuck Palahniuk
We middles see the world in shades of grey rather than in the clear blacks and whites of committed animal activists and their equally vociferous opponents
Hal Herzog
Was there ever a great true love? Anyone who became the object of my obsession and not simply my affections?...I could not let myself become that unmindful. Isn't that what love is - losing your mind? You don't care what people think. You don't see your beloved's faults, the slight stinginess, the bit of carelessness, the occasional streak of meanness. You don't mind that he is beneath you socially, educationally, financially, and morally - that's the worst, I think, deficient morals.
Amy Tan
There’s not really such thing as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, there’s just like…humanity. And it gets broken sometimes.
Isaac Marion
Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines.
Eric Greitens
In insisting that personal habit and political action be one and the same, absolutist moralizing limits the possibilities of both.
Heather Paxson
What then is the relation of law to morality? Law cannot prescribe morality, it can prescribe only external actions and therefore it should prescribe only those actions whose mere fulfillment, from whatever motive, the state adjudges to be conducive to welfare. What actions are these? Obviously such actions as promote the physical and social conditions requisite for the expression and development of free—or moral—personality.... Law does not and cannot cover all the ground of morality. To turn all moral obligations into legal obligations would be to destroy morality. Happily it is impossible. No code of law can envisage the myriad changing situations that determine moral obligations. Moreover, there must be one legal code for all, but moral codes vary as much as the individual characters of which they are the expression. To legislate against the moral codes of one’s fellows is a very grave act, requiring for its justification the most indubitable and universally admitted of social gains, for it is to steal their moral codes, to suppress their characters.
R.M. Maciver
But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of 'The Three Bears', for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house". The moral of 'Snow White' is "Never eat apples". The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
Lemony Snicket
Now I was nothing but a shade of grey - my moral compass ambiguous.
Jennifer L. Armentrout
Napoleon would always be extremely fastidious when it came to other people's morals, although his own were frequently questionable.
Leslie Carroll
I value ethical standards, of course. But in a culture like ours – which devalues or dismisses the reality and power of the inner life – ethics too often becomes an external code of conduct, an objective set of rules we are told to follow, a moral exoskeleton we put on hoping to prop ourselves up. The problem with exoskeletons is simple: we can slip them off as easily as we can don them.
Parker J. Palmer
In some stories, it's easy. The moral of "The Three Bears," for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house." The moral of "Snow White" is "Never eat apples." The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand.
Lemony Snicket
A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.
Stephen Sondheim
Anyway, there were thousands of Kantoreks, all of them convinced that they were acting for the best, in a way that was the most comfortable for themselves.But as far as we are concerned, that is the very root of their moral bankruptcy.
Erich Maria Remarque
If anthropological data suggests something short of the ideal, that is not because nothing is universal, but because two universals are in conflict: universal moral knowledge and universal desire to evade it. The first one we owe to our creation. The second we owe to our fall.
J. Budziszewski
But if the Bible is not everywhere literally true, which parts are divinely inspired and which are merely fallible and human? As soon as we admit that there are scriptural mistakes (or concessions to the ignorance of the times), then how can the Bible be an inerrant guide to ethics and morals? Might sects and individuals now accept as authentic the parts of the Bible they like, and reject those that are inconvenient or burdensome?
Carl Sagan
I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners."Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.
Mark Twain
Politics really must be a rotten profession considering what awful moral cowards most politicians become as soon as they get the job.
Martha Gellhorn
He thanked God that she had been born and sheltered to such innocence. But he knew life, its foulness as well as its fairness, its greatness in spite of the slime that infested it, and by God he was going to have his say on it to the world. Saints in heaven - how could they be anything but fair and pure? No praise to them. But saints in slime - ah, that was the everlasting wonder! That was what made life worth while. To see moral grandeur rising out of cesspools of iniquity; to rise himself and first glimpse beauty, faint and far, through mud- dripping eyes; to see out of weakness, and frailty, and viciousness, and all abysmal brutishness, arising strength, and truth, and high spiritual endowment-
Jack London
Evolution of mind was altogether another matter and belonged to another science, but whether one traced descent from the shark or the wolf was immaterial even in morals. This matter had been discussed for ages without scientific result. La Fontaine and other fabulists maintained that the wolf, even in morals, stood higher than man; and in view of the late civil war, Adams had doubts of his own on the facts of moral evolution:
Henry Adams
All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.
Sheri S. Tepper
I learned from him that often contradiction is the clearest way to truth
Patti Smith
It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
Albert Einstein
Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
Mark Twain
The flowered trim on the hems [of the dress] seemed superfluous, even frivolous, but at the same time it comforted her, as though the idea that a seamstress had thought to adorn clothing so innocently implied that somewhere, innocence was safe.
Gaèl Baudino
Innocence is thought charming because it offers delightful possibilities for exploitation.
Mason Cooley
Adults havethe benefit of experience and know the trick will work as long as the technique is correct.When we “grow up” we gain this experience and knowledge, but we lose our innocence andsense of wonder. In other words, the price we pay for growing up is a permanent sense ofloss.
Alberto Alvaro Ríos
Westcliff thinks that St. Vincent is in love with you.”Evie choked a little and didn’t dare look up from her tea. “Wh-why does he think that?”“He’s known St. Vincent from childhood, and can read him fairly well. And Westcliff sees an odd sort of logic in why you would finally be the one to win St. Vincent’s heart. He says a girl like you would appeal to…hmm, how did he put it?…I can’t remember the exact words, but it was something like… you would appeal to St. Vincent’s deepest, most secret fantasy.” Evie felt her cheeks flushing while a skirmish of pain and hope took place in the tired confines of her chest. She tried to respond sardonically. “I should think his fantasy is to consort with as many women as possible.”A grin crossed Lillian’s lips. “Dear, that is not St. Vincent’s fantasy, it’s his reality. And you’re probably the first sweet, decent girl he’s ever had anything to do with.
Lisa Kleypas
Mr. Cope...' Povy began.Jem narrowed his eyes.'The lad has a remarkably innocent face.''Innocence is a time of life, not an irrevocable blot.
Eloisa James
Innocence is defined in dictionaries as freedom from guilt or sin, especially from lack of knowledge; purity of heart; blamelessness; guilelessness; simplicity, etc.
William Maxwell
Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world.
Héctor Tobar
There is no sanctity. This is the downfall of innocence.
Nadège Richards
Things that are truly innocent don’t need to be labelled as such.
Zoë Heller
and yet a child’s utter innocence is but its blank ignorance, and the innocence more or less wanes as intelligence waxes.
Herman Melville
In the middle of a wrist's suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there's an acupuncture point that says, Get back to who you were meant to be. This is the heart spot, the center. Your whole life the skin on that place will stay closest to being a baby's skin, as close as you can get anymore to the way you started, the way you once thought you'd always be.
Monica Drake
The hopeless hope is one of the early harbingers of spring, bespeaking an innocent belief that the world might right its wrongs and reverse its curses simply because the trees are coming into leaf.
Aleksandar Hemon
Church didn't answer that. Instead he said, "The darkness is all around us. Very few people have the courage to light a candle against it.""I'm not that kind of idea
Jonathan Maberry