Quotes by American Authors - Page 46

...a disciplined pursuit of less will keep us focused and make the greatest impact.
Tim Hiller
His hands go to my waist—my waist! And they feel so right. I like this closeness. Maybe I like it too much. A guy has never been this close to me. Never. And I can’t believe it’s happening, even if it is to keep from being arrested.My heart beats frantically. Isaiah is hot and scary and hot. Why on earth would a guy like him want to be anywhere near a girl like me?It’s the adrenaline rush. That’s what it is. I like how he feels because I’m still experiencing the adrenaline rush from Isaiah’s NASCAR driving skills. His arm shifts, and I love how that movement causes his muscles to flex.Stop it, Rachel. It’s not real. Focus.
Katie McGarry
Whatever you focus on expands.
Brownell Landrum
...Learn to concentrate, to give all your attention to the thing at hand, and then to be able to put it aside and go on to the next thing without confusion. My husband said that being President of the United States meant that you saw more kinds of people, took up more subjects, and learn more about a variety of things than anyone else. But it required complete concentration on the person you were with and on what he was saying. When that person left the room, you pulled down a shade in your mind, and you were ready, with your attention free, for what the next person had to say. You might have to shift from banking to forestry, but each subject had the attention and concentration it required and each, in turn, was put in the back of the mind, ready to be called upon when needed.
Eleanor Roosevelt
...you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being.
Brian Tracy
Two questions form the foundation of all novels: "What if?" and "What next?" (A third question, "What now?", is one the author asks himself every 10 minutes or so; but it's more a cry than a question.) Every novel begins with the speculative question, What if "X" happened? That's how you start.
Tom Clancy
I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the straight narratives. p60
Chuck Klosterman
Publishers, readers, booksellers, even critics, acclaim the novel that one can deliciously sink into, forget oneself in, the novel that returns us to the innocence of childhood or the dream of the cartoon, the novel of a thousand confections and no unwanted significance. What becomes harder to find, and lonelier to defend, is the idea of the novel as—in Ford Madox Ford’s words—a “medium of profoundly serious investigation into the human case.
James Wood
When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.
William Boyd
With the right tools, you can write anything ...
Jeff Lyons
The men were smashing windows and aiming their weapons through them. The driver had opened the door and was shouting for the women and children to get out and run and hide. But Ilina realized in some vague way that he never managed to actually say the word "hide." He really said, "Women and children, get out, get out, get out! Run and..." The clerk's wife thought it was odd that he had stopped in the middle of a sentence, and even stranger that she herself knew the word, heard the word "hide" in her head when the driver stopped talking.
Clark Zlotchew
To write is human, to receive a letter: Devine!
Susan Lendroth
The simple act of sitting here sipping this cappuccino is its own testament to my commitment to living the writer’s life. Which is to say: doing nothing but doing it exceedingly well.
Sol Luckman
Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement.
Peter Straub
Every book I've read appears in my writing.
Rob Bignell
You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.
Annie Dillard
The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
Annie Dillard
I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.
Annie Dillard
There's a hum that happens inside my head when I hit a certain writing rhythm, a certain speed. When laying track goes from feeling like climbing a mountain on my hands and knees to feeling like flying effortlessly through the air. Like breaking the sound barrier. everything inside me just shifts. I break the writing barrier. And the feeling of laying track changes, transforms, shifts from exertion into exultation.
Shonda Rhimes
Leave me to die a lonely death. An artist’s death. A writer’s playground. A painter’s background. A philosopher’s bread and butter.An endeavor that we all face. I just hope that I’m not the only one there.
A.P. Sweet
I truly don’t understand why at every Q and A, someone always asks, “Do you have a routine?” or “Do you write every morning?” Why those questions remain interesting, I really have no idea. But since no one’s putting a gun to their head to ask them, they must compel. They’re probably necessary on a symbolic level more than a literal one, as people cobble together an imagination of what a life devoted to “making” might be like.[I think people want a path to follow. They want a checklist so they can say, “Alright cool, so if I get up at six and I write for this long and I watch this film and I do that…”]It’s weird, because I might have wanted that, too. I used to dance in New York. My Lower East Side days. Modern dance, or whatever. One thing I learned as a dancer was that people learn combinations different ways. Some people, if they get the right side, they can also get the left side right off the top of their head. Some people need to be taught both right and left. Some people count, some people never count, you know? I noticed then that, for me, it was really watching the whole person dancing, trying to take in the whole combination at once, that helped me learn it. I think I’m the same way as a reader—I like to take in the whole book, not getting too specific about how they did it, but ride the bigger example.I mean, at the end of the day, the answer to the question “How did you do it?” is right there, on the page. They’re showing you how they did it, by doing it. Maybe it’s different with art, when you don’t know if someone had all their sculptures knitted or welded by elves somewhere, but with writing, the answer to the question “How do you write a book like this?” is usually, “Like this” [points to book].
Maggie Nelson
There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking.
Charles Bukowski
I haven’t had writer’s block. I think it’s because my process involves writing very badly.
Jennifer Egan
Trying to erase, hide, discredit, degrade, and suppress a writer's work, merit, voice, and influence―is unconstitutional. Censorship only exists to protect corruption.
Suzy Kassem
Criticism is no threat to your self-esteem or identity, but rather informs you.
Bryant McGill
I've realized the quirky things that make you different are what make you beautiful
Lily Collins
You ask a certain question again and again, in a sincere fashion, and the answer appears. But, in my experience, at least, that answer arrives according to it's own mysterious celestial timing, and often in disguise. And it comes in a way you're not prepared for, or don't want, or can't at first, accept.
Roland Merullo
He loved her in spite of her unlovableness. Armande had many trying, thought not necessarily rare, traits, all of which he accepted as absurd clues in a clever puzzle.
Vladimir Nabokov
It was amazing the things you could bring yourself to do when you felt insecure, when you were out to protect your heart. You could deny it what it wants most, just for the sake of saving your pride or dodging another bullet.
Rachael Wade
His fists clenched at his sides. 'Damn it! Where's your pride?' 'Pride? It's in my heart, of course.' 'You're letting me demean you!' She smiled. 'You can't do that. I can only demean myself.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Damn tricky cats!
Shelly Laurenston
If he didn't have Ronnie already in his arms he'd have assumed she'd just opened the door...and aged a few years. Wow, he thought in surprise, she's going to be hot when we hit fifty.
Shelly Laurenston
Yes. I appreciate the helpful and long spreadsheet with all the many places you can't go.
Shelly Laurenston
Ronnie snarled and Brendon roared back.Her eyes narrowed. "You roared at me?""And I'll do it again if you can't keep your paws off my Oreos.
Shelly Laurenston
She pulled her lips away again. "Wait!"He stopped and stared at her."I'm relatively positive we're not supposed to be doing this.""Who says?""The laws of nature and God.""Laws are made to be broken and God just wants us to be happy." Fucking this woman would make him so damn happy. "Come on. Let's go break some laws.
Shelly Laurenston
The amazing ones are, those that don't know it!
Anthony Liccione
Turn your pride into love in order to fill your life with joy.
Debasish Mridha
Jovan: "I'll pass any test you present me. I assure you."Eviona: "I wonder what the best test of pride would be." :)
Eve S. Nicholson
It would be an existence rife with difficulties... but of a pleasurable kind, difficulties they could take pride in, possess, value, as one would a family heirloom.
Khaled Hosseini
My father referred to it as "the finest song ever written for fifteen fingers." He made me play it when I was getting too full of myself and felt I needed humbling. Suffice to say I practice it with fair regularity, sometimes more than once a day.
Patrick Rothfuss
The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ.
A.W. Tozer
Jennifer Merrick had stored all her tears inside her, and her pride and courage would never permit her to break down and shed them.
Judith McNaught
A session of boasting won't attract any real friends.  It will set you up on a pedestal, however, making you a clearer target.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I love books where I can't wait to turn every page, songs that grab me the first time I hear them, and films that make me totally forget about the craft because I am totally engaged in the story.
John Grooters
I thought you could build a story that would function as a machine or else a complex of machines, each one moving separately, yet part of a process that ultimately would produce an emotion or a sequence of emotions. You could swap out parts, replace them if they got too old. And this time you would build in some redundancy, if only just to handle the stress.One question was: Would the engine still work if you were aware of it, or if you were told how it actually functioned? Maybe this was one of the crucial differences between a story and a machine.
Paul Park
You can tell your story any way you damn well please.Its your solo.
Jandy Nelson
As Kipling said, that’s another story...
Harper Lee
Sometimes it's easier to tell ourselves a story.
Meg Wolitzer
The Book CharmYour Story Will Never End As Long As Your Chapters Are Shared
Viola Shipman
When writing, I uncage KAT: Keep Adding Tension. Even if I don't know where the story's going, petting the KAT keeps it purring.
Don Roff
Now to tell ya about our fellow inmates. Pay attention because there are a bunch of us an’ we each have a story.
Jason Medina
She can paint a lovely picture, but this story has a twist. her paintbrush is a razor, and her canvas is her wrist.
Amy Efaw
Be selective in your battles...
Brandi L. Bates
Everyone's life changes when they meet their Obi-Wan & their Yoda, or their Morpheus & their Oracle; those who help remove the veil.
Brandi L. Bates
While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school.
Holly Sprink
My caregiver mantra is to remember: the only control you have is over the changes you choose to make.
Nancy L. Kriseman
One goal of the mindful caregiver is to find ways to not feel ‘dis-eased’ in the caregiving process.
Nancy L. Kriseman
Mindless fear is greater than mindful fear.
Idowu Koyenikan
We cradle in our nucleus emotional ingots gathered through studied immersion of the incongruities of life. In an elusive quest to disinter meaning out of life, we must cull joy from our daily rituals while conscientiously striving to nourish the nucleus of our buried innate essence. By discovering inner peace blossoming amongst the rubble of daily life, while determinedly searching out the cytoplasm our innate essence, a person’s reveals their inspirational tranquility.
Kilroy J. Oldster
A tiny spark ignites a flame, just as a helping hand can do the same
Nonnie Jules